Alternate Universe: Rove, Rush on Bush

Being with him is a religious experience. “He walks into that office,” Karl Rove told Rush Limbaugh yesterday, “and lights up that building with --you know, it sounds corny, but it's inspiring to work around him.”

He is talking about George W. Bush? Limbaugh double-checked: “Does it frustrate you with all the attacks on him as brain dead or a frat boy?”

“This,” Rove reassured him, “is one of the best-read people I've ever met. This is a Harvard MBA. This is a Yale undergraduate whose major was history and whose passion is history. Many times the people I see criticizing him are, you know, sort of elite, effete snobs who can't hold a candle to this guy. What they don't like about him is that he is common sense, that he is Middle America.”

“He outsmarts 'em,” Rush summed up.

“Yeah,” Rove explained about the Yale-Harvard Middle American President. “In a way, they ‘misunderestimate’ him, and he likes that.”

Rove disclosed details of their book-reading contest: “I beat him last year, 110 to 94, and I'm ahead this year. I won't give you the total because it would crush you, and again he keeps saying, ‘Look, I'm the leader of the Free World, but, you know, I won the first year.’ In fact, it was almost... It was very funny.

”Wait,” Limbaugh interjected. “He's not reading little pamphlets?”

”No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! In fact, we both agreed upon a Mutually Assured Destruction. When we got too competitive last year, we both started reading John D. MacDonald mysteries, which are really delicious...We were reading them quickly, enjoying them a lot, and then we realized this was being far too competitive. So we limited the number of John D. MacDonald mysteries we were both reading, so we could get back to the serious stuff.”

Who could have guessed the level of intellectual byplay in the Bush White House?

If you want to read the full text, do so soon, since it comes with a note, “Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.” The interview, like the Bush Administration, is programmed to self-destruct.