Critics Take the Lead in Defining Bush's Legacy

Bush's Vegas Stop Fills GOP Coffers

President Bush has been to Las Vegas nine times since he was first inaugurated, but last Wednesday was the first time he ever stayed overnight in Sin City. He and his aides (and the traveling press corps) did so in luxury, staying at the Venetian, the palatial casino resort run by Sheldon Adelson, the chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp. and a big force in GOP and philanthropic circles. (He is part of the money behind Freedom's Watch, the conservative foreign policy group formed as a kind of counterpoint to liberal groups like MoveOn.org.) Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were in the loading dock at the Venetian Thursday to greet Bush and jumped into his limousine to ride with him to his speech sponsored by a conservative think tank.

After the speech, Adelson -- who was at the White House in November for the official dinner for French President Nicolas Sarkozy-- hosted Bush at a Nevada GOP fundraiser at his home in the Tournament Hills gated community. A Nevada GOP official would not provide figures for the total take.

Guess He Drinks Out of the Bottle . . .

Bush spent the night Thursday in Kansas City, Mo., at the five-star InterContinental hotel, but because he usually goes to bed early, it's unlikely he watched the hard-hitting investigative piece by the local television station KCTV about the lack of cleanliness of glasses and mugs in hotel rooms.

The television station booked rooms at Kansas City hotels and placed hidden cameras to see how hotel staff handled the glassware when they thought nobody was watching. According to a report on the KCTV website, the station put toothpaste on some of the glasses or left soda in others to make it clear they had been used.

Among the hotels identified as a problem: the InterContinental.

Here's how the station described what happened at the hotel: "The undercover camera captured video of the housekeeper grabbing the glasses, putting them under the tap, running the water and wiping them out with her bare hands -- no soap. She steps back into the room to straighten up, spots a bowl of strawberries on the counter, rifles through them and then eats one. She then wipes down the dirty countertop and uses the same towel to dry the glasses." (A call by KCTV to the hotel manager went unreturned; the station says a hotel official threatened to call the police when a reporter showed up to discuss the matter.)

KCTV quoted an infectious-diseases specialist warning that guests risk infection if glasses are not properly sterilized. White House spokesman Tony Fratto, who traveled with Bush last week, said the president is not sick and pointed out, helpfully, "The president usually drinks bottled water."

State of the Union: One More Time?

Your columnist was deluged with e-mail this past week over a phrase in a story stating that last Monday's State of the Union address was "likely" Bush's last. How could that be, readers wanted to know, since Bush is leaving office (they thought) on Jan. 20, 2009.

The Constitution says the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union," so it is theoretically possible for Bush to report again before he leaves office. Indeed, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower both delivered written addresses shortly before they left office, and Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson appeared personally before joint sessions of Congress in their final days, according to CBS Radio's Mark Knoller.

But not to worry, Bush haters, the White House is, in fact, assuring us that last Monday's speech was his last State of the Union. In a briefing, White House counselor Ed Gillespie described the speech as the "final" such speech to Congress. "We can't imagine him doing another one," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "It'll be the last."