A couple days ago

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A couple days ago I took a harmless whack at Maureen Dowd for an error she made in her Sunday column on Al Gore. But I was even more interested in this paragraph.

At W.’s inauguration, as Bill Clinton and Al Gore walked down the stairs, Bill stopped at James Baker’s row. “You were good in Florida, man, damn good,” Elvis told the Velvet Hammer. Gesturing toward Mr. Gore, he went on: “But if this [epithet] would’ve listened to me and put me out on the trail, you’d of never had the chance to be good.”

Where’s that quote from? I follow politics pretty closely and I’ve never heard it before. Not even as scuttlebut. More to the point, the quote sounds a bit like what we sometimes call a story that’s too good to check. In other words, it sounds a bit too good.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Clinton didn’t say this. He very well may have. He certainly believes in the premise of the quote. But without a clue about the source it’s hard to evaluate its credibility.

So where’s the sourcing? Where’s the quote from? I doubt Hillary or Bill gave it to her. Was it Jim Baker? Al Gore? Who?

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