My Brush with the Bubble

My colleague Howard Wilkinson, the Enquirer's longtime politics writer, pulled me aside this morning to tell me this story.

When George W. Bush visited Cincinnati last week for a Mike DeWine fundraiser in Indian Hill, our local congressman Steve Chabot knew he had only a few moments of the president's attention as he greeted him on the airport tarmac. Chabot wanted to register his opposition to the Dubai Ports deal and decided to hand the president my editorial cartoon from that morning's paper.

The president took the cartoon and folded it up and put it in his pocket without looking at it. When Chabot urged him to read the cartoon, Bush said he'd look at it later. Apparently the bubble that surrounds this president extends even to cartoons.

Newsweek mentioned the story as an example of the administration's resistance to all things conflictual.

I enjoy wondering at what point in the day the president might have fished this random piece of paper out of his pants pocket to see what the heck it was. I imagine it went out with the trash in Indian Hill, or was returned to the White House in a plastic baggie with other business cards and whatnot from the dry cleaner who launders the First Pants.