Talking Points has been worried for some time about over-playing George W. Bush’s militant provincialism and penchant for verbal gaffes. (Really. No kidding, he has.)
Can’t this just be a dressed-up form of cultural or regional pretension? Liberals wasted no end of time harping on Ronald Reagan’s lack of intellectual curiosity and culture.
And what good did it do them? Not much. At best it further alienated them from their one time base of support among middling working families in the Midwest and the Northeast. And to some extent with good reason.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the signs that our new president is an imbecile.
On NBC’s Dateline, Tom Brokaw asked Bush if any White House invitation to Scalia could be construed as some sort of payback for handing him the presidency. Here’s how Reuters reported the conversation:
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I do like him. (But) I guess we’re going to have to scratch him off the invitation list now,” he replied to interviewer Tom Brokaw.
When his wife Laura Bush protested that it was perfectly normal for the president and first lady to host the Supreme Court, Bush interrupted, saying, “He just teasing…”
“He was just trying to make sure Anthony didn’t get a good meal,” Bush said, correcting himself quickly, “Antonio.”
But neither name was quite right.
The first name of the man appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986 by former President Ronald Reagan is “Antonin.”
Is this some sort of cultural jujitsu? Is he suckering us into looking like East Coast, elitist snobs?
