Presidential Reading Material

Earlier I posted this exchange from Brit Hume’s Monday interview of President Bush:

HUME: How do you get your news?

BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything.

I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.

HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you’ve…

BUSH: Practice since day one.

HUME: Really?

BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there’s opinions mixed in with news. And I…

HUME: I won’t disagree with that, sir.

This naturally leads one to wonder what Mr. Bush does read (we already knew he likes The Hungry Caterpillar). Fortunately, former librarian and current First Lady Laura Bush decided to fill us in:

She said the one of President Bush’s favorites was the Dr. Seuss’ book “Hop on Pop.”

“George loved to read to our girls and they would actually act it out. He would lie on the floor and read ‘Hop on Pop’ and they would jump up and down on him.”

AB

P.S. I was tempted to clip the quote and omit the part about reading it to the daughters, but that would be too Safirian.