Even the Fish Story is a Phony.

George Bush, as has been widely reported by now in the blogsphere, was asked by a German magazine what his best moment in office was, and he answered catching a big perch.

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Note incidentally that the New York News changed the wording to reflect what the fish actually is: a largemouth bass. But the original interview question here, at the end of the page (in German) makes it clear that he said, 'perch.' (Perch in German is 'barsch')

There is so much that could be said. First of all, given his failures in areas including Iraq, catching Osama bin Laden, creating good (as opposed to Wal-Mart) jobs, the deficit, energy, health care, and the environment, there was not much he could point to in the way of actual accomplishments. So I guess with that backdrop, the fish is probably the best thing he's done. One would wonder why he would answer with an achievement that would remind people of the criticism he endured last year about being on vacation more than any President in recent memory.

Clearly not a fisherman though. A 7.5 pound perch would be pretty near to a record, if not a record. So it probably wasn't a perch. In fact, it was, as the white house quickly fed the New York News, a largemouth bass. And not just any largemouth bass. Read the following (this stuff is funnier than anything I could come up with even if I tried):

Read paragraph sixteen of this profile of Steve Bridges (the Bush impersonator).

In paragraph sixteen, the writer is talking about he President's past, and he writes,

In the midst of his 1999 campaign run, the man who was once a Yale cheerleader scuffed up and spit-polished his Texas twang. Shortly before he was elected, he bought a sixteen-hundred-acre pig farm in Crawford, Texas, and transformed it into an old family homestead, complete with a man-made lake stocked with largemouth bass cross-bred so that they’re easy to catch.

So he made a lake, then stocked it with fish that were specially bred, easy-catch fish. So now he says his biggest thrill was catching one. That means that even the fish turns out to have been what amounts to a carefully choreographed set up. But he doesn't even realize it.

Has this man EVER achieved anything that wasn't in some way, set up for him, handed to him or the path lubricated for him?