Joe,
You’re a genius. Theodore Winston Klein! Fantastic name. My wife and I are done having kids, but now I’m thinking Gordon Disraeli Brooks. Wellington Waterloo Brooks. Have you thought about William the Conqueror Klein?
It’s really been fun chatting with you. I know I keep coming back to the same old stories, but let me finish with another look at the Woodward and Balz series in the Post. Here is the final scene today. The president and his top advisers are at Camp David. They’ve spent the whole day on war planning. After dinner, a little relaxation. Ashcroft is at the piano. Rice is singing “Old Man River” and “Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen” and I guess a few other Republican spirituals.
Meanwhile, Balz and Woodward report, “Bush was at a table nearby, joining in trying to assemble an elaborate wooden jigsaw puzzle.”
Now, my first question is, which aide leaked that it was an “elaborate” puzzle? Would they be afraid we’d think it was a simple puzzle? That we’d think Bush was sitting there with a Fischer Price triangle-circle-square puzzle? Perhaps it was a locate the continents puzzle: Africa goes here … Europe goes there …
Nonetheless, the whole image is so Norman Rockwell. So purely American. I’m sure somebody was off in another corner playing Scrabble and somebody else was reading the Saturday Evening Post.
Well, as Bush said at another point in the piece, “At some point we may be the only ones left. That’s OK with me. We are America.”
God bless him.
David
