The Disconnected President

Meacham: "It's been a long seven years."

Laura Bush: "It's gone by in, like, a flash."

Meacham: "Has it? Has it?"

Laura Bush: "It has. I mean, my girls went from freshmen in college to 26-year-old grown women."

Meacham: "Are you ready for it to be over?"

Laura Bush: "Not really. . . . "

Meacham: "What about for you, Jenna?"

Jenna Bush: "Well sure I'm looking forward to it. . . . I'm ready for, you know, somebody else to be on CNN, of course. I mean, I think he's done a great job. And I admire anybody that would put themselves out there like that. . . . [But] I'm ready for somebody else to try to do it. I'm ready to have my parents back."

Misunderestimating India

I shouldn't have said Bush made no news at all on Friday. Alistair Scrutton writes for Reuters: "A remark by President George W. Bush saying India was partly responsible for rising global food prices has sparked a nationalistic storm across the political spectrum, with the defence minister calling it a 'cruel joke'.

"The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's main opposition party, threatened on Monday to force a parliamentary debate on Bush's remarks that India's increasingly prosperous middle classes were helping push up prices. . . .

"Praising the growing prosperity of developing countries, Bush said on Friday 'there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class'.

"'That's bigger than America . . . and when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up,' Bush said, according to a White House transcript. . . .