Cliff Notes for Dummies....

Bush, Rove says, not only reads the Bible cover to cover every single year

**Sigh**

Rove truly believes the American people are dumber than dirt.

The truth is that no one in a position of responsibility -- much less President of the United States -- could read as much as Rove claims Bush does.

In September I attended a dinner at the Library of Congress celebrating Laura Bush's National Book Fair, and my tablemates subjected me to a barrage of "Bush is a reader" talking points. The two people to my left, White House staff, perhaps sensing my tone of utter disbelief, ramped it up: they claimed that George and Karl even competed as to the number of cubic inches in each book they read. The guy on my right wasn't a member of the administration, but since I write children's books, he wanted to express to me his horror about the dangerous magic in Harry Potter books. I do believe that Laura Bush reads, though.

30 pages a day equals 25 medium-sized non-fiction books a year. That sounds believable. Rove's idiocy isn't.

In September I attended a dinner at the Library of Congress celebrating Laura Bush's National Book Fair, and my tablemates subjected me to a barrage of "Bush is a reader" talking points. The two people to my left, White House staff, perhaps sensing my tone of utter disbelief, ramped it up: they claimed that George and Karl even competed as to the number of cubic inches in each book they read. The guy on my right wasn't a member of the administration, but since I write children's books, he wanted to express to me his horror about the dangerous magic in Harry Potter books. I do believe that Laura Bush reads, though.

Operation "Repair the Legacy" is in full swing.

And per usual, the 'liberal' media will be a fully cooperating accomplice.

I have to point out, that Americans are dumber than dirt, as more people believe in angels then they do in evolution.

If Curious George reads lengthy books about history, and shorter books about philosophy, but one page PDB's, you might question his priorities. You would also think he would have the ability to understand abstract thoughts, and occasionally point out historical references. But then he has an MBA from Harvard, and never reaches a level of discourse higher than an elementary school student.

Please, can't we put Rove and Bush behind us? Why would you even believe this Rovian horsesXXt enough to feel it worth responding to??

Screamin' Demon finds the money quote. The statement that Bush reads the Bible cover to cover every year is all you need to know everything else is crap.

Mike

I have always taken it for granted that Bush read Camus's The Stranger because someone told him it was about killing an Arab.

I wonder if, GeeDub and the Rovester ever "discuss" the books that they read. I suspect curious George has a different definition of reading than the rest of us. Comprehension and retention do not fit into his definition so those discussions would have been quite short.

Well, there's "reading," and then there's "reading comprehension." A person can easily breeze through 25-30 pages of a book a night, but not necessarily understand or grasp anything they are reading. Let alone remember anything significant.

Nobody could read as much as Rove claims Bush does and still be so impervious to ideas.

Really, though. Who cares what this stupid man does anymore?

Rove is a traitor.

Not to defend Dubya, but there are a number of published Bibles that facilitate reading the Bible in a year. Tyndale Publishing has The One-Year Bible, and they publish a number of translations. So, if he did this as devotional reading, I can buy it. However, beneath George's thin veneer is an even thinner veneer, so I question what, if anything, he takes away from his Bible reading.

Rove is so very focused on Bush. I noted in the article he commented on knowing Bush for 35 years. I wonder if Bush is not the most important relationship in Rove's life.

Assuming Rove is accurate (a big assumption, I know), it suggests an even stranger person than we already see. They apparently compare "total lateral area" of the books? Why? How is Bush continually reading yet still sounds so unformed in his speeches? If he is in fact reading this way, it suggests that he is continuously resisting any depth that reading comprehension would work on him, or he simply does not comprehend what he reads. Either way, it suggests a man of greater problems than we realized.

I grant you, this is simply monumental crap from Rove, and this column is far more useful in understanding Rove than understanding Dubya. In that context, I have always felt sorry for the people most intimate with Karl Rove because he seemed such a wretched person. I feel greater sorry for them now, because compared to Bush, no one else in Karl Rove's life compares in importance. I doubt that Rove's wife and son are even real to him in the way Bush is.

The last eight years have shown that both of these men are pathological liars. Why would anyone even talk to them, knowing the answers would be total self-serving bullshit?

they claimed that George and Karl even competed as to the number of cubic inches in each book they read.

So does W read the large print editions? Illustrated editions? WTF? This is so stupid it should be beyond belief, but it certainly sounds like the Bush Admin.

Rove said Bush reads the Bible cover to cover every year, not a devotional. Cover to cover every year? Including Deuteronomy and Numbers? Now we know Rove is lying. As if that's anything new.

And the idea of Bush reading "The Stranger" has always provoked me to fits of hilarity. The idea that Bush could read that without a flash of recognition is mindpissingly funny. Rove only made that up so he and his friends had an excuse to misuse "existentialism."

As far as "The Stranger," Bush didn't "read" it, he listened to Billy Joel's musical version of it.

He's still unclear about the symbolism of Brenda and Eddie.

Rove only made that up so he and his friends had an excuse to misuse "existentialism." ericfree

I know nothing about "The Stranger", but wasn't the discussion at the time that Camus wrote about a civil war in Algeria that was similar to Iraq's? That Petraeus recommended it?

In the 35 years I've known George W. Bush, he's always had a book nearby. He plays up being a good ol' boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader.

Wow. This is the equivalent of the magician showing us the mirrors and the smoke machine. And Camus? Prezidint Hyuck Hyuck Goose reads some fancy nancy French dude?!

I think Rove has it in for his former John.

*According to the GOP, people who read anything BUT the Bible (as directed by their pastors) are intellectuals.

I have no doubt that George W. Bush goes through scores of books a year. And I bet in most of them he was able to keep his crayon completely within the lines.

Screamin' Demon says that "Rove truly believes the American people are dumber than dirt." Karl Rove would be right. The American people elected George Bush, and then they went back for seconds in 2004. As H.L. Mencken correctly noted, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American booboisie."

Andrew, 2:13pm, nails it.

This is Rove recounting his first encounter w/GW:

"I can literally remember what he was wearing: an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, bluejeans, complete with the—in Texas you see it a lot—one of the back pockets will have a circle worn in the pocket from where you carry your tin of snuff, your tin of tobacco. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have."

GW is clearly the big love of his life, his lord and master in every respect.

(Source: Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/05/12/030512fa_fact_lemann)

I almost feel sorry for the guy. Worst closet case I ever did see. Between that, his learning that he is (literally) a bastard, and his mother's suicide, his mind and soul must be miasmas of muck.

For the arithmetic on the Leader's Omnibibliocity, go here:
http://underbelly-buce.blogspot.com/2008/12/bush-reader.html

Well, uh, wouldn't the rather obvious facts that Mr. Bush is astonishingly ill-informed, that he is more or less completely incurious about all things, and that his logical processes are woefully deficient argue against his being much of a reader at all?

Hey, what's wrong with books on tape? I've listened to lots of them, abridged (yes) and unabridged. Many abridged books are an improvement on the original. Listen to Shakespeare and you'll hear things you never noticed when you read a play. I also read a lot of hard copy books and magazines, way more than Karl Rove, I bet. Heck, maybe I should be running the country and/or bloviating on Fox News! I'd even be willing to tell the truth occasionally.

Hey now, "The Pet Goat" is a fine story worthy of any American with a 2nd grade reading comprehension level!

What are we going to talk about when we don't have W. to kick around any more? Don't tell me, I think I know already; Sarah Palin!

Do picture books count? How about those pop-up books? I can't wait to visit the GWB Presidential Library (!) when it finally opens. I can picture maybe 2 or 3 dusty volumes on an otherwise empty, dusty shelf. When you open them up, everything's redacted.

I seem to recall the guy from the Washington Note bringing this up a while back (I can't find the post now). I've always found Bush's reading habits a bit odd myself, but apparently he was able discuss some books on that appearence with Lamb in detail.

I do think it's a bit weird that he's always reading these books, but really shows no inclination towards being intellecually curious in other ways (as opposed to Obama, for example)..

Steve Clemons has been convinced that GWB is a dedicated (and attentive) reader... I can't say that his essay persuades me, but it's an interesting perspective:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/09/what_books_on_a/

> The truth is that no one in a position of
> responsibility -- much less President of the
> United States -- could read as much as Rove claims
> Bush does.

If you have a CEO-level job, a full-time domestic staff, and a private airplane & helicopter, and all you do is ride your mountain bike and read for 8 years, then sure you could get through that number of books/year.

Cranky

OK, so 30 minutes/day signing papers that are handed to you by Dick Cheney...

It's astonishing that Karl Rove, vicious, depraved and criminal as he is, can so easily command column inches in major, serious, international newspapers.

No wonder their circulation is declining.

The Stranger is the perfect book for Bush: an amoral protagonist who kills Arabs!

It's not cheating on reading by picking up a book, bouncing it on your palm a couple of times and saying, "there, I read it", if the president does it.

What a cosmic joke. Bush is dyslexic. He has had a lifelong contempt for intellectuals and anyone who can actually read. His "knowledge" comes not from books, but directly out of his keister. Rove is doing his usual slinging of the sophistry to see how many millions still listen to anything he says.

Rove once again trots out the textbook definition of bullshit. I used to wonder about why the Bushies bothered to tell such obvious lies, until I read Harry Frankfurt. Now I understand that he doesn't care whether what he's saying is true or false, only that it creates a certain impression.

I don't know if it's that he's losing his touch, or just that he doesn't have the power of the (pre-lame duck) presidency behind him, but Rove used to be a much more effective bullshit artist than this. I can only hope that the stink of Bush sticks to him for the rest of his life, and drags down anyone evil enough to make use of his dubious "skills."

Does Bush know that, after grade school, 'reading' is normally understood to mean more than passing your eyes over the words and sounding them all out?

It takes a lot longer to read if you actually try to understand the sentences and stuff.

he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader.

Or unless you're a very well connected legacy student. How do you think they build those endowments anyway?

Joe E. Lewis once enthusiastically endorsed Evelyn Woods' Speed Reading Course, "It was great," he said, "I read Moby Dick in fifteen minutes. It was about a big fish."

The idea of Bush being a voracious reader made me think of Jamie Lee Curtis in "A Fish Called Wanda".

She's calling Otto stupid as an ape and he protests, "Apes don't read philosophy."

JLC responds, "Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up."

biggerbox nails it. W and Rove have a different concept of what "reading" means.

Which one of Bush/Rove's minions was it who said "We create our own reality"?

This is just Karl playing his PR games again. Got to keep the Republican base down on the farm, you know.

http://www.slate.com/id/2100064/

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."
David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."
Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."
Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."

"Bush's college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!"

The sad thing is this means he'll never fucking die.

Regarding reading the Bible in it's entirety in the course of a year, it is possible and many plans are available to help accomplish it. Yes, there are some excruciatingly tedious parts. I also found sections of "Les Miserables" tedious, but slogged through and gained much from the whole work.

I wonder if some of those dimissing reading the Bible as crap have ever read significant parts of it, out of curiousity if nothing else. Set aside religious claims to divinity, inerrancy, and literalism and read some ancient literature as literature. I and II Samuel tell a great narrative about politics, power, and leadership. Really. Judges 9 contains a story about choosing leadership, including the obscure, intriguing Parable of the Trees. I think it speaks to the disaster that has been the Bush Presidency. The politics of destruction hardly orginated with Karl Rove!

The only part of this report I find believable is that Mr. Bush reads the Bible through each year. But, like Andrew noted earlier, I doubt if he gained anything from it. That is, I suspect he read it looking for answers or support for what he already thought or believed. Too bad. A more reflective person might have found some wisdom there or, at least, some questions he needed to ask himself about his behavior.

Obviously * doesn't read the Sermon on the Mount very carefully. Besides everything else Rove is a pathological liar.

he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader.

This is something that could only be written by someone who, like Rove, has little direct experience with college, history majors, or business school.

There are two types of people who read that passage in the WSJ-- the people who knowingly laugh at Rove's obvious BS'ing, and the "aspirational" readers of the WSJ who swallow it whole, believing that this was what it must be like to be a Yale-educated executive with an MBA.