{"id":6002,"date":"2005-12-06T09:12:56","date_gmt":"2005-12-06T14:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6002"},"modified":"2005-12-06T09:12:56","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T14:12:56","slug":"ill-take-bushs-word-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ill-take-bushs-word-for-it\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ll take Bush’s word for it"},"content":{"rendered":"

The conventional wisdom tells us that the president, unlike<\/a> some of his predecessors, is not a voracious reader when it comes to the daily news. Over the weekend, the New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller seemed anxious to debunk this notion — which she described as “crazy” — and defended Bush’s reading habits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Discussing Bush’s appetite for information, host Chris Matthews wondered about the similarity between Bush and “guys who won’t ask directions when they drive somewhere.” BBC News host Katty Kay responded: “The telling moment for me in his presidency was when he came out and said … ‘I prefer to get my news and my information from objective sources, and those are the people around me,’ rather than from anything external.”<\/p>\n

Kay’s observation prompted Bumiller to reply, “Katty — he reads the papers. Please, you know, I — this is crazy. Whenever I say this, people don’t believe me. He reads the newspapers. I am here to tell you he reads the newspapers.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not according to Bush. Bumiller’s incredulity notwithstanding, the president has personally admitted to not reading newspapers. In fact, in September 2003, Bush told<\/a> Fox News’ Brit Hume, “I glance at the headlines just to kind of [get] a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are [sic<\/i>] probably read the news themselves.” (The president’s briefers “probably” read the news?)<\/p>\n

For that matter, Bush talked to the Washington Times’ Bill Sammon a year later and boasted about his news-consuming habits, or in this case, lack thereof<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I don’t watch the nightly newscasts on TV, nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things,” the president said. “I don’t read the editorial pages; I don’t read the columnists.”<\/p>\n

Yet Mr. Bush regularly monitors the news pages of a select few daily publications.<\/p>\n

“I get the newspapers — the New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post and USA Today — those are the four papers delivered,” he said. “I can scan a front page, and if there is a particular story of interest, I’ll skim it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, when most of us see a newspaper article that we think might be interesting, we read it. When the president sees a story of particular interest, he’ll “skim” it. How reassuring.<\/p>\n

Bumiller said “people don’t believe” her when she says Bush reads newspapers. I think there’s a good reason for their skepticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The conventional wisdom tells us that the president, unlike some of his predecessors, is not a voracious reader when it comes to the daily news. Over the weekend, the New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller seemed anxious to debunk this notion — which she described as “crazy” — and defended Bush’s reading habits. Discussing Bush’s appetite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}