Sentences that make you go Hmmmm

Friday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) has an interesting story in the sane section of the paper; it's interesting because it's a nice example of the circumlocutions of political reporters who are trying to raise a delicate issue without affecting their access to the White House. The issue is to extent to which President Bush is on top of his job. This is approached via the question of the information flow to the President, highlighted by two recent cases where he didn't know what his own government was doing.

One was a policy change for people entering the US from Mexico but more serious was him being completely out of the loop on the Cessna scare at the White House a few weeks ago. The article discusses the information channels to Dubya and what we learn is that: there aren't that many. He has no e-mail address, no back-channel way of getting snail-mail (like Bill Clinton did), doesn't read newspapers or watch TV news, and relies on people in immediate proximity around him for information.

But, we're told, this is still better than Reagan:

Scholars say Jimmy Carter was probably the most obsessive about absorbing the minutiae of governance, while Ronald Reagan was the least concerned. Mr. Bush showed a notable understanding of the al Qaeda organization following the 2001 terrorist attacks, and he has a weekly teleconference with Gens. George Casey and John Abizaid, who head U.S. forces in Iraq.

So criticism is avoided by the pleasing reference to Dubya being on top of War on Terror issues. But wait ... what's the criterion for a "notable" understanding of al Qaeda, and when was this notable understanding acquired? It certainly wasn't from any reading up before 9/11. By the way, one of our abiding memories of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was puzzlement at the speed with which al Qaeda in general and the 15 Saudis plus 4 others in particular were identified as the perpetrators. We don't say this to delve into the weirder conspiracy theories about 9/11, simply to note that one of the scandals of 9/11 is that the government actually had considerable relevant prior information that was never connected by the people at the top until it was too late.

So maybe Dubya really started reading up on al Qaeda on 9/12 and got good at it. For instance, he connected those Saddam/al Qaeda dots that lesser mortals could not see.