If you happen to hear a "giant sucking sound," it could be emanating from the book-readin’ contest (US News, Aug. 20) going on now between the President and his kabuki-demon brain, Karl Rove.  The tally so far is 60 books (estimated to amount to 27,000 pages) for the President to Rove’s mere fifty.  The pages are flying but, why all the hifalutin’?  There is speculation that the White House is worried that the incumbent may be perceived as lacking the gravitas his office requires.  But is he not revered by the American public as an honest-to-gosh authentic backwoodsman, like Honest Abe?  Rove may figure that this cover is about to blow, due in part to exchanges like the following, from yesterday afternoon’s hasty news conference:

QUESTION: And would you campaign against Senator Joe Lieberman, who’s a Republican [sic] candidate (OFF-MIKE)?

BUSH: I’m going to stay out of Connecticut.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Mr. President, you were born there.

Oooowhh. (Colleged there too.)  Only a selection from the President’s reading list appears in US News.  Biographies of baseball stars and other power figures are well represented: what, one can only wonder, was left out?  Rumors that Rove has been disqualified for counting fifty re-thumbings of The Concept of the Political as fifty books cannot be confirmed. 

Isn’t this all PR, the product of anxiety that Bush, the 43d, may not make crack the US News top-100 presidencies?  White House spokesman Tony Snow says, No.

He’s not a legacy guy.  It’s
not, "I’ve got to get this bill passed because it’s important to my
legacy."  He takes a longer view of things.

You know, not legacy, but longer-term stuff.  Do the reading.  But, lest his base get the idea that W. is going panty-waist on them, a "top insider" revealed the following to US News (Aug. 20: "Animal House in the West Wing"):

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain
biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that
the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip
when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women,
always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy
who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to
cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but
forget about getting people to gas about that.

Things can’t get much L’Etranger than that.