Rove: I 'defeated' Bush in book-reading contest

[tinrobot]

Critics of President Bush often refer to him as something less than an intellectual giant, but Republican strategist Karl Rove begs to differ.

According to him, President Bush has read 186 books in the last three years alone.

In a column titled "Bush Is a Book Lover" published in The Wall Street Journal, Rove revealed that he and the president have contested one another in reading since 2006 -- a contest Rove said he won every year, including this one.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Rove_I_defeated_Bush_in_bookreading_1226.html

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Rove fails to mention that "My Pet Goat" counted as a "book" in this contest.

[Politicub]

1. How pathetic

Ugh - so glad this group will be shown the door.

[gratuitous]

23. Pathetic is le mot juste

Both for the boast, and for the people who believe this nonsense, from the Wall Street Journal on down.

Doesn't mean we can't have a little fun with it. Quick, Mr. Bush: Name five books you've read in the last year, and what you liked or disliked about each one.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

[mascarax]

2. Dubya was on vacation half the year, every year...

and he still couldn't beat Rove in this alleged Book Readin' Contest?

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

3. Quantity < Quality.

The fact that you read more Hardy Boys novels than Bush means very little.

[rpannier]

4. The Bush Reading List

1. Hop on Pop
2. Red Fish Blue Fish
3. My First Animal Coloring Book
4. Go Dog Go
5. Dot-To-Dot: Book 1
6. The Alphabet from A-Z
7. Color the Fish
8. Dot-to-Dot: Book 2
9. Sponge Bob Our Dad's Level 1
10. Squirrel's Coloring Book
11. Cookie Monster's Learning Letters
12. The Tooth Book
12. Mr Brown can Moo. Can you?
13. Bears on Wheels
14. Are you my mother?
15. Alphabet Tracing Book
16. Bubble Trouble
17. Making Animals out of Paper
18. Circle, Square and other shapes
19. Silly Sally
20. Is Your Mama a Llama (he had real problems with this book)
21. Baseball stats of the 90's
22. The Blowin' Bubbles Book
23. First 500 Words to Know
24. Baby Animals
25. The Pop Up Book of Dinosaurs

This is the list the White House has yet to classify as Top Secret.
The rest of the books are classified

[Olney Blue]

5. Truly unbelievable.

[NYC Liberal]

6. Right, as if we would ever know if that number was real or not.

He could just make up a number out of thin air ... who's going to prove him wrong?

So I call bullshit.

[The Gunslinger]

7. He must have taken the fast path to finishing the choose you own adventure books

[wyldwolf]

8. I recall in my grade school summer reading clubs...

...we would read books several grade levels beneath us to rack up the points (those McDonald's french fries were quite the motivator.)

[Book Lover]

9. "Bush Is a Book Lover" - I feel faint, and a little nauseous

Never before have no many words paraded through a man's mind with so little impact. If GWB is a voracious reader, and has been for the past 3 and a half decades, then I give up. Literacy is no guarantee against the fall of civilization. I'm going to go and work at McDonalds.

[csziggy]

10. Remember, Rove's Math had the GOP winning most elections in 2006 n/t

[vanboggie]

11. All bullshit

and who gives a shit anyway. :shrug:

[Historic NY]

12. Looking at pictures & smut magazine's does not count............

maybe I'd include comics.

[JohnyCanuck]

13. I 'defeated' Bush in book-reading contest

Would anyone be impressed if The Rock boasted that he defeated an 85 year old granny in a wrestling match?

[NJCher]

14. Let's do the math

OK--186 books over 3 years is 62 books a year and averages out to 1.2 books per week. The average book has, say 300 pages. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say 250 pages. That comes to around 36 pages a day. Believable?

I don't think so, and here's why. As a professor, I have to break out reading schedules for students. Sometimes I will include the average number of pages per day that have to be read for the student to finish the entire reading assignment for the week. A heavy week is 35 pages per day. That's an approximate to bush's supposed readings each day, as indicated in my previous paragraph.

The story is misleading, however. He doesn't really read that much, or so the story claims. In the last paragraph of the story, it says "That year’s contest drew headlines over the lengthy list of Bush's books, which reportedly Andrew Roberts’s "History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," Nathaniel Philbrick’s "Mayflower," and Albert Camus’s "The Stranger," according to Rove.

Bush’s total has dropped each year, says his former advisor: from 95 books in 2006, to 51 in 2007, to just 40 in 2008, with less than a week to go until the end of the year."

Now let's look at this from another angle: content. The article tells some of the other books he supposedly read and they are books like this:

David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter"
Rick Atkinson's "Day of Battle"
Stephen W. Sears's "Gettysburg"
James M. McPherson's "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief."
President Grant's "Personal Memoirs,"
Jon Meacham's "American Lion,"
Jacobo Timerman's "Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number."

I sampled some of the above reading material at Google books and I read two pages a minute, so using that figure, he would have to read about 18-20 minutes a day.

I suppose that is do-able so it's conceivable he did so, but he would have to do this seven days a week, every week. Personally, I can't manage that but then, I'm addicted to the internets and do most of my reading there.

Another way to look at it is how much he refers to his reading material. I know when I am reading a book, I am seeing the world through the lens of that book. I refer to it in my communication. I would think most voracious readers would do that. I don't have any of bush's day-to-day conversations or comments, so I can't really say much more on this. Also, since speechwriters write his speeches, they can't really be looked at as his communications. I would think, however, that bush might edit his speeches to put in comments from his reading. I don't ever recall comments of this nature.




Cher

[ColbertWatcher]

15. "he would have to do this seven days a week, every week." Along with all his Presidentin'

It doesn't seem likely to me either.

Of course, Rove has always been a liar, so this is par for the course.

[Historic NY]

18. throne room reading...

:hurts:

[ColbertWatcher]

19. I'm almost certain the Cokespoon Cowboy does other things when he's in the bathroom. n/t

[Oak2004]

16. And, as someone with a rare spine disorder who can take only a few steps,

I have defeated my high quadriplegic neighbor in a running contest.

Though frankly I think Rove cheated. Reading "The Prince" over and over again shouldn't count as multiple books.

[Swamp Rat]

17. "Bush has read 186 books in the last three years alone."

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[anonymous171]

20. This is part of Rove's Bush Legacy Project (Historical Revision.)

[Are_grits_groceries]

21. Meh!

My cats defeated Bush!

[peekaloo]

22. Bu$h's lips move when he reads which slows him down.

I'm guessing if you figure in comic books and the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew series that 186 number is still too high. It's so unlike Rove to exaggerate or outright lie. :eyes:

[Johonny]

24. Might be true

So he gets the media guide for every baseball team. That's what 30 books right there. 3 years. He's got 90 books read already. Media guide have lots of pictures. Throw in the NFL media guides. 32 teams! That's 96 books. Suddenly he's read 186 books! I believe it.