People Watching and Beach Reading

I could write a little post about all the people watching we did down at the beach today.  Human beings in all sizes -- from XS all the way up to XXXL. 

Personally, I was partial to the XS variety.  Especially this one, who looked to be 4 - 5 months old.  She wore a hot pink and white flowered bikini with a matching floppy hat that tied beneath her chin.  She had thighs to die for and was chewing on her hands like crazy; drool and sand all mixed together.

Coincidentally, The Skimmer was partial to the human beings in bright bikinis, too, who also had thighs to die for.  They were more the M - L variety.  In this case, though, it was The Skimmer who was chewing on his hands and drooling.

Yeah, I could write about all of that in detail -- how a lot of the M - XL human beings were bouncing around playing beach volleyball and throwing footballs around, all tan and oiled up, but that would be boring, don't you think?

Instead, let's talk about Karl Rove.  I'd take a break from people watching and read Lessons of a Failed Presidency, Why Karl Rove Couldn't Deliver by Joshua Green from the September issue of The Atlantic.

Here's an excerpt:

Rove's behavior toward Congress stood out.  "Every once in a while Rove would come to leadership meetings, and he definitely considered himself at least an equal with the leaders in the room," a Republican aide told me.  "But you have to understand that Congress is a place where a certain decorum is expected.  Even in private, staff is still staff.  Rove would come and chime in as if he were equal to the speaker.  Cheney sometimes came, too, and was far more deferential than Rove -- and he was the vice president."  Other aides say Rove was notorious for interrupting congressional leaders and calling them by their first name.

Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office (and no more a shrinking violet than DeLay), told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them.  "For all the years he was president," Armey told me, "Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we'd do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it.  Bill Clinton and I didn't like each other.  He knew that when I left his office, the first school kid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president's autograph.  I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it."  Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it.  "Bush refused to sign the card.  Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, 'It would probably wind up on eBay'", Armey continued.  "Do I give a damn?  No.  But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult?  It's stupid.  From the point of view of your own self-interest, it's stupid.  I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader.  If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with?  The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office."

What small men.  XS hearts and minds with XXXL egos.  I can't wait till every last one of them is gone.  It can't happen soon enough.

Comments

[billy pilgrim]

Yeah, I was saying over at my joint that Rove's rep for being a political genius was earned against some of the most clueless Dems; He could take the most obvious dirty tricks, telegraph them totally, give written warning, and when they inevitably lost, the Dems would stand there wondering what happen like some dimwitted hamster.

But lets go back to talk about those M-L humans with the oil and the bikinis....

[blue girl]

BP? What are you doing in my blog?! You are banned! And have been banned since 2005!

Ok. You've been de-banned.

Dimwitted hamsters is right. I'm sick of the Democrats.

You know, Green writes above that Armey's name tag story is an example of exquisite pettiness. I don't think that story, or what Armey and Clinton did together was petty at all. Or that Armey being put off by Bush and Rove's arrogance was petty either.

Or, by adding the word "exquisiste" does it make it an "OK" sort of pettiness?

What?

I think I have sun stroke.

[angry fucking ballerina]

My experience w men is the bigger the ego, the smaller the penis.