“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful — and so are we … They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people — and neither do we,” President Bush announced to Pentagon officials during a recent signing ceremony for the $417 billion defense bill.  

While the assertion that the American government is hard at work trying to harm its citizens was a little surprising, perhaps we should be accustomed to President Bush’s blunders by now; the president has confidently claimed that “it’s the executive branch’s job to interpret law,” and he has also made the astute observation that “the illiteracy level of our children are appalling.”  

Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate magazine, has delighted in collecting President Bush’s malapropisms and verbal blunders, and has written The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms: The First Term, in His Own Special Words, chronicling the president’s attempts to navigate the complex terrain of the English language. In his hilarious and vitriolic article about the president, Weisberg quotes Paul O’Neill, a former treasury secretary, as saying that “the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection.”

In Weisberg’s estimation, Bush’s inarticulacy — and many argue downright stupidity — is actually a selling point because it makes him a man of the people: “I think his inarticulacy is part of it, people identify with his problem. You know, it’s hard to speak in public — one makes mistakes, it can be embarrassing. And this bonds him to people.”

While Mr. Bush’s perpetual struggle with language has provided Americans hours of mean-spirited entertainment, let’s hope we’re not treated to another four years of such fun.

Mimi Hanaoka