I have nothing against fishing. I don't fish as an adult, but I used to go with several of my uncles when I was growing up. Sometimes we fished the rivers or TVA lakes, and sometimes we'd go to a commercial stocked lake. But we never pretended the two were the same. You went to a stocked lake when you wanted a guaranteed score, or for a contest. It wasn't real fishing.

So now we have the story of Bush telling a German newspaper that his favorite moment of his Presidency so far was catching a 7.5 pound bass (originally reported as a perch) in his lake. On his "ranch". (A real ranch has cattle. His doesn't.) The lake he had dug. And stocked with bass. The whole thing is stupid, a rich man playing at being a commoner, like the quail "hunts" Cheney goes on with birds that have a hard time getting off the ground.

You know, when Jim Lehrer asked Bill Clinton if the Kosovo intervention was the best moment of his Presidency, he listed some other things that might qualify, like passing his economic program, passing the Brady Bill, the role he played in the peace process in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East. Bush could have picked something along those lines; the day on the rubble of WTC with the bullhorn, for instance. The day the statue of Saddam came down. "Mission ImpossibleAccomplished". The day they found Saddam. Pushing through his tax cut package. Or he could have picked something about his family, like the day the twins graduated from college. But this President? No, he chose catching a medium-sized fish in a stocked pond on his own ranch. Something completely, totally, obscenely self-centered.

I never liked Bush. I never understood the people who said they'd like to sit down and have a beer with him. But now? I loathe him. There is not a true bone in his body.