{"id":7343,"date":"2006-05-08T09:11:01","date_gmt":"2006-05-08T13:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7343"},"modified":"2006-05-08T09:11:01","modified_gmt":"2006-05-08T13:11:01","slug":"i-once-caught-a-fish-this-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/i-once-caught-a-fish-this-big\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I once caught a fish this big…’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When asked before the 2004 election about his biggest mistake, [tag]Bush[\/tag] couldn’t think of anything. Asked over the weekend about his [tag]best moment[\/tag] in office, the [tag]president[\/tag] seemed to have trouble<\/a> again.<\/p>\n

During his more than five years in office, Bush has traveled the world’s most impressive cities, met with world leaders and entertained celebrities.<\/p>\n

But when the German newspaper Bild asked him to name his best and worst moments as president, Bush gave an offbeat answer about the best moment. […]<\/p>\n

Bush admitted it was not easy to pick a best moment because “I’ve had a lot of great moments,” according to a transcript of the Friday interview released Sunday.<\/p>\n

“I would say the best moment was when I caught a 7 1\/2-pound [tag]largemouth bass[\/tag] on my lake,” Bush said, laughing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oddly enough, this was a softball question. It was a slow, hanging curve, giving Bush a chance to highlight anything he wanted — his joy at watching the Saddam statue fall, signing one of his tax-cut measures into law, one of his inaugural addresses, a productive meeting with Tony Blair or another head of state, something of substance<\/i>. Instead, the moment that comes to mind is a 7 1\/2-pound largemouth bass.<\/p>\n

What’s more, as the New York Daily News noted<\/a>, that’s not even a particularly big [tag]bass[\/tag] by Texas standards. “A largemouth bass has to be more than 15 pounds to crack the top 50 biggest catches, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.”<\/p>\n

I realize Bush was probably going for the laugh, but according to the transcript<\/a>, the president didn’t follow it up with a real highlight of his five years in office; he just let the fish tale stand.<\/p>\n

Then again, given this guy’s record, the bass may actually be the highlight of the last five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When asked before the 2004 election about his biggest mistake, [tag]Bush[\/tag] couldn’t think of anything. Asked over the weekend about his [tag]best moment[\/tag] in office, the [tag]president[\/tag] seemed to have trouble again. During his more than five years in office, Bush has traveled the world’s most impressive cities, met with world leaders and entertained celebrities. […]<\/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-7343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343","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=7343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}