Posted on 06/23/2002 8:01:07 AM PDT by winin2000
As I sit in my office, munching Pirate's Booty, sipping my caramel macchiato and watching a sweaty President Bush on TV extolling the glories of exercise and nutrition, I have four questions:
Why is the most fitness-crazed president in the nation's history sometimes so short on stamina?
Why does someone who bench presses 185 pounds still have an aura that's more scrawny than brawny? ("The chair," one Republican moaned, "has a way of swallowing him up.")
Why does the leader of the free world, a man with limitless opportunities for stimulation, seem to get really jazzed only when he can run his 6:45 miles?
Does it ever occur to Mr. Bush and his aides to vacate the gym and nail down a Middle East policy?
The president was scheduled to deliver a speech on the Middle East to tell us how he would help stop the cycle of violence there. But then, after another bombing in Israel, he postponed it. If he's supposed to have a plan to stop the killing, why let the killing stop the plan?
Nothing ever forces W. to postpone his daily workout, even when a gunman shot up the White House lawn one morning at 11:30 a.m. while he was on the treadmill, or when the Supreme Court met on the deadlocked presidential election.
He even sometimes takes along a treadmill on Air Force One, sticking it in the plane's conference room, and takes one to hotel suites. (If you do the treadmill in an airplane and press the "incline" button really hard, are you a space traveler?)
W. doesn't even like to watch TV news while he works out. Aides say he likes to focus on "the fitness."
Maybe, given all the things he can't get a handle on — terrorists regrouping in every corner of the globe, Arafat pretending he's in control, and the F.B.I. and C.I.A. pretending to get along, not to mention the problem of trying to explain the reshuffling of the bureaucracy after he told us there was no need to reshuffle the bureaucracy — the president wants to spend time on a few things he can control: pecs, glutes, abs, quads and delts.
This is not exactly what the Pentagon has in mind when it calls on the president to show American muscle.
On Thursday at the White House Fitness Expo, Mr. Bush said that exercise helped him with stress and mental agility, so he hoped it could do the same for his staff. Yet, the most striking thing about watching the president on his recent trip abroad was that he had so little stamina — especially compared with the hyperactive traveling style of his father.
After staying up with Vladimir Putin two nights until midnight, W. was exhausted and cranky in Paris. What is the point of going to bed nearly every night at 9:30 and working out maniacally if you get the wind knocked out of you so easily?
At every company, underlings ape the boss's passions to curry favor. So naturally, 400 administration employees rushed to sign up to trot along with the president in a three-mile run this weekend. The big question among the fittest staff members, as The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller noted, was whether they should allow the president to win.
Dana Milbank reported in The Washington Post that the White House Athletic Center "has become a pungent-smelling beehive of 24-hour athleticism. Bush aides say they are cutting back on caffeine and alcohol in favor of soy milk and three liters of water a day." Mary Matalin and Karen Hughes have been hanging out there, pumping Arnies, as in Schwarzenegger, a combination of the biceps curl and triceps press.
Some West Wingers admit that they are jealous of Richard Armitage, the State Department honcho who is built like Bluto, because Mr. Bush likes to chat with him about lifting weights (as opposed to throw-weights). And they are envious of Condi Rice, who has bonded with W. by working out with him in Crawford while they talk sports and world leaders. A geovascular experience.
Mr. Bush once told a friend that he was a gym rat because he was afraid that his inner fat boy might come out. Why doesn't he ever worry about the emergence of his inner brain boy?
What this president desperately needs is a few more geeky, scholarly analysts with thick glasses and shameful physiques, poring over memos and intelligence feeds at the C.I.A., F.B.I. and N.S.A.
Toned bodies are well and good. But how about some toned minds?
But little Maureen here is getting worrisome. Can anyone recall a column of hers in the past year that wasn't some cutesy regurgitation of the "Bush-is-dumb, Bush-is-illegitimate, Bush-is-a-puppet-of-Cheney" boilerplate?
I mean the American Spectator didn't obsess over Clinton the way this woman seethes over Dubya! I can't help but think a psychiatrist would be intrigued.
Leaving a wet spot on the chair, Maroon?
Maureen just has her own values which, thank gosh!, are foreign to most of us.
What Maureen Dowd thinks is about as important to me as what a gnat thinks because she is as important as a gnat.
If she died today, nothing would be cancelled.
Dowd sucks. Big time.
When Clinton's inner rapist/psychopath boy emerged, Maureen swooned with sheer delight.
He showed plenty of stamina during those weeks that Gore annoyingly fought the election results.
Why does someone who bench presses 185 pounds still have an aura that's more scrawny than brawny?
This statement only proves that Dowd judges people by how they look and not by their accomplishments. If I were her, I'd be ashamed of admitting I had that tendency.
Why does the leader of the free world, a man with limitless opportunities for stimulation, seem to get really jazzed only when he can run his 6:45 miles?
Would she prefer he used stimulants, as some politicans might have done while they were in office?
Does it ever occur to Mr. Bush and his aides to vacate the gym and nail down a Middle East policy?
Looks like she thinks Bush has to prove he is doing important work by doing it in a rush, at the last minute (midnight) like Clinton did.
Dowd has told us a lot about herself. Dowd's own words show her to be a "surfacey" person who doesn't value depth (aka, gravitas).
What a waste of newspaper this column of hers is!!!! All she needed to do, to save herself from the embarassment of writing this column, was to think of the way Clinton spent his time with Monica in the Oval Office.
This statement alone, proves that exercise is good for the brain. Maureen needs more exercise, less sugar; more thinking, less munching.
If Maureen died today, somebody would fill her space tomorrow, the world would little note.
Maureen is being groomed to take the place of Helen Thomas in the Senility Hall of Fame.
You just keep on sucking down that Pirate's Booty and caramel macchiato Maureen. I look forward to the day when you have morphed into Helen Thomas.
Ah, cut her some slack. After all, the poor flabby thing lost the man she obsessed over to a younger, tight bodied thing poor Mo couldn't hold a candle to. She's understandably sensitive when anyone talks about "fitness".
I always knew you were a brilliant, insightful person.
To everyone, remember this when reading a Dowd column:
From Oxblog:
IMMUTABLE LAWS OF DOWD1. Ashcroft never deserves credit.
2. Offering constructive solutions to problems, instead of whining endlessly about them, is a sign of weakness.
3. The People Magazine principle: all political phenomena can be explained with reference solely to caricatures of the personalities involved ("Dubya" is stupid; "Poppy" is an aristocrat; Cheney is macho-man; etc.). Any reference to the common good or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passe.
4. It is much better to be cute than coherent.
5. Maureen knows best. Her long years as a columnist (doing basically what your great-aunt Tillie does in the nursing home bull sessions, but getting paid for it) have given her deep insight into foreign relations, politics, welfare, the Constitution, and all other topics. To disagree with Maureen in any way is not only a sign of being wrong, it's a hallmark of pure evil...or at least membership in the NRA, which is pretty much the same thing.
6. It is usually possible and always desirable to name-drop and name-call in the same sentence. 7. The particulars of my consumer-driven, shamefully self-involved life reveal universal truths.
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