{"id":7345,"date":"2006-05-08T10:07:04","date_gmt":"2006-05-08T14:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7345"},"modified":"2006-05-08T10:07:04","modified_gmt":"2006-05-08T14:07:04","slug":"soul-searching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/soul-searching\/","title":{"rendered":"Soul searching"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m glad the president has hit it off with German Chancellor [tag]Angela Merkel[\/tag], but I really wish [tag]Bush[\/tag] knew well enough to avoid describing others’ souls<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President George W. Bush said on Sunday he gained a glimpse into German Chancellor Angela [tag]Merkel[\/tag]’s soul when they met in Washington last week.<\/p>\n

Bush told ARD television that Merkel had described her youth in communist East Germany at a White House dinner on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“She spoke of her childhood, of her father who was a pastor, of the (communist youth group) young pioneers, of her school life. And I have to say I got a glimpse into her soul, into how she feels,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush’s soul insights have proven to be somewhat unreliable. You’ll recall, of course, that Bush met Russian President Vladimir [tag]Putin[\/tag] in Slovenia in 2001, and in praising Putin, famously said<\/a>, “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”<\/p>\n

The Reuters report noted that Bush’s remarks about Merkel were “translated…from a German transcript of the ARD interview.” Is it possible the president was misquoted? Apparently not — the official White House [tag]transcript[\/tag]<\/a> has him saying the same thing as the Reuters report.<\/p>\n

Given the infamy of the comments on Putin, doesn’t Bush realize he should shy away from this kind of “soul searching”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m glad the president has hit it off with German Chancellor [tag]Angela Merkel[\/tag], but I really wish [tag]Bush[\/tag] knew well enough to avoid describing others’ souls. President George W. Bush said on Sunday he gained a glimpse into German Chancellor Angela [tag]Merkel[\/tag]’s soul when they met in Washington last week. Bush told ARD television that […]<\/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-7345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7345","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=7345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}