[a fool in paradise]

The press detail assigned to his 2000 campaign was bored hearing him deliver the same speech 4 times in a day. They admitted that they took delight in finding the one passage where he’d slip up one time that day and exploit it as evidence that Bush was “dumb”.

Purely partisan propaganda. Obama flubs and we are supposed to overlook it, read the transcripts which omitted the ums uhs and misstatements.

The personal attacks on President Bush began while he was still governor campaigning. And those Democrats who claimed to have supported McCain in 2000 revealed their true colors in 2008 when they voted against him in the general campaign saying “this is not the McCain of 2000 we liked”.

[Verginius Rufus]

There was a hit piece on George W. Bush in The New Yorker in late 1999, which included his college transcripts. How those were leaked to the magazine was never explained as far as I know. Of course the purpose was to advance the thesis that GWB was dumb.