Coleman was showered with criticism after his self-assessment appeared on the cover of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. In his responses, first unapologetic then remorseful, the freshman senator insisted he’d only meant the comparison in terms of support for President Bush.
That sort of direct contrast isn’t possible for Coleman and Franken because their Senate terms coincide with different administrations: Coleman served only under President George W. Bush and Franken only under President Barack Obama.

But Coleman was in the Senate with Obama for a couple of years, so that’s a basis for comparison. In 2007, when both voted, Coleman and Obama voted differently 119 times. In 2008, Coleman and Obama cast opposing votes 43 times, for a total over their two years together of 162 votes at odds.

Franken on the other hand has voted with his party (and Obama, presumably) 95.5 percent of the time in 88 votes so far, according to the Washington Post — meaning he has voted against the Democrats (and Obama) about four times.

At that rate, over a two-year span equal to Coleman’s overlap with Obama, Franken will vote out of step with Obama only about 32 times — an 80 percent improvement over Coleman, by Coleman’s standard of measurement.

One thing almost everyone can agree on: As his 100th day in office approaches on Thursday, Franken (whose staff didn’t respond to a request for comment) is surely a 100 percent improvement over the vacancy in Wellstone’s seat that persisted for six months while Coleman challenged his election in court.

Here is an excerpt from the the April 7, 2003 Roll Call story, “Coleman Becomes Big Draw“:

Still, Coleman is loyal to Bush, perhaps because the president stood by his side in the last days of the campaign. And the Minnesota Republican is not shy about comparing his legislative accomplishments to those of his predecessor.

“To be very blunt and God watch over Paul’s soul, I am a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone,” Coleman said. “Just about on every issue.”

When pressed about the remaining 1 percent, Coleman sidestepped the issue and instead talked about his desire to support Bush.

“In other words, Wellstone was never with the president,” Coleman said of the first two years of the Bush administration. “I could be with the president most of the time. If I disagree on affirmative action. If I disagree on ANWR. If I disagree on something else down the road, so what. The differences are so profound.”

Two days later, Roll Call reported on the fallout, under the headline “Coleman Under Fire“:

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) spent most of Tuesday dodging criticism over the freshman’s claim in Monday’s edition of Roll Call that he is a “99 percent improvement” over the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D).
Former Wellstone aides demanded an apology from Coleman, while Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) chastised his new colleague.

“I think it was an unfortunate comment,” Daschle told reporters. “I was one of those fortunate enough to consider Paul Wellstone a very, very dear and special friend. And I disagree with Senator Coleman 100 percent of it.”

Protesters also showed up at Coleman’s St. Paul office demanding that he “change the tone in Washington,” a pointed reference to one of the themes of his campaign last year.

For his part, Coleman initially released a statement that did not challenge the quotes that were attributed to him in the front-page story. He also did not specifically apologize in that statement.

“Mark Twain said the problem with talking to the media is they’re likely to print what you say,” Coleman said in a prepared statement. “It was my responsibility to be more clear in my remarks to Roll Call. It was my understanding we were comparing my relationship to this White House to the relationship Senator Wellstone had with this White House. I would never want to diminish the legacy or memory of Senator Paul Wellstone, and I will accept full responsibility for not having been more accurate in my comments.”

But late Tuesday, Coleman phoned HOH and said that he did want to apologize for any hurt that he caused.

“I fully apologize,” he said. “I accept the fact that there is a higher degree of sensitivity when talking about Senator Wellstone.”

Coleman stressed that he did not want to hedge anything about the context of his comments. “I apologize and it won’t happen again. I’ll choose words more carefully in the future. It’s not the reporter’s mistake. It’s my mistake.”

National Portrait Gallery (Obama: Warren Perry)

Think it was mere chance that got Minneapolis a mention in President Obama’s address to Congress? It turns out that the select occasions in the past when Minnesota’s biggest city turned up in presidential addresses have always been during serious talk about tough times. In fact, it happened first during the first State of the Union of the Great Depression.

Herbert Hoover, annual message to the Congress on the state of the union, Dec. 2, 1930:

The world-wide depression has affected agriculture in common with all other industries. … The price levels of our major agricultural commodities are, in fact, higher than those in other principal producing countries, due to the combined result of the tariff and the operations of the Farm Board. For instance, wheat prices at Minneapolis are about 30 per cent higher than at Winnipeg, and at Chicago they are about 20 per cent higher than at Buenos Aires.

Herbert Hoover, address in Springfield, Ill., Nov. 4, 1932:

In speaking at Des Moines I gave some figures at which farm commodities could be sold in the United States from foreign countries, even in these days of distressing and even heartbreaking prices, if the tariff were reduced to a competitive basis for revenue. I can add some items that are especially applicable to the State of Illinois. … Your butter, which sells in New York at 22 cents, could be sold from New Zealand at this moment for 16 were it not for the tariff. And, as a matter of fact, your wheat, distressing as the price is, is selling in Minneapolis today at 12 cents above the Canadian price for similar grades.

Ronald Reagan, radio address to the nation on a House budget proposal, March 26, 1983 (on the other side of another economic crisis):

As inflation and interest rates come down and our tax cuts come on stream, families have more to spend or save, as you wish. And that is why savings and productivity are growing again. Recently I received a letter from the president of a family-owned lumber company in Minneapolis, one which — like so many other small firms — has been hard-hit by the recession. But now this man’s mood has turned optimistic. He told me that his sales for the months of December and January were the best for 3 months in his company’s 50-year history. And he wrote, “Mr. President, don’t get stampeded into some ill-conceived pump-priming scheme that will lead to another round of inflation boom and bust. You were elected to break that cycle. What you’ve done is working.” Well, my answer to that fine gentleman is, “I won’t be stampeded. I intend to do everything I can to protect this recovery all of us have worked so hard to achieve.”

Here’s a quote that’s worth a mention, though it doesn’t fit the pattern and came from a man who was not yet president. It’s a kind of bookend to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s remarks about Hurricane Katrina in the official Republican response to President Obama’s address last night.

George W. Bush, address accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Aug. 3, 2000:

And, in the next bold step of welfare reform, we will support the heroic work of homeless shelters and hospices, food pantries and crisis pregnancy centers — people reclaiming their communities block-by-block and heart-by-heart. I think of Mary Jo Copeland, whose ministry called “Sharing and Caring Hands” serves 1,000 meals a week in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Each day, Mary Jo washes the feet of the homeless, then sends them off with new socks and shoes. “Look after your feet,” she tells them. … “They must carry you a long way in this world, and then all the way to God.” Government cannot do this work. It can feed the body, but it cannot reach the soul. Yet government can take the side of these groups, helping the helper, encouraging the inspired.

Finally, one earlier Minneapolis mention by President Obama:

Barack Obama, the president’s weekly address, Feb. 7, 2009:

From the beginning, this recovery plan has had at its core a simple idea: Let’s put Americans to work doing the work America needs done. It will save or create more than 3 million jobs over the next 2 years, all across the country — 16,000 in Maine, nearly 80,000 in Indiana — almost all of them in the private sector, and all of them jobs that help us recover today and prosper tomorrow. … Jobs that rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges and levees and dams, so that the tragedies of New Orleans and Minneapolis never happen again.

Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and other presidents mentioned Minneapolis during addresses they gave while visiting Minnesota, but there the reference was clearly for parochial purposes. The quotes listed above are the only other presidential addresses that mention Minneapolis listed at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project Web archive.

Alberto Gonzales (WDCpix)

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will cooperate with a “truth commission” proposed by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy to look into possible unlawful conduct by the Bush administration, the Washington Independent reports. This morning reporter David Weigel caught up with Gonzales after a forum on Republicans and the Hispanic vote and posed the question.

Gonzales’ reply:

“My view has always been to be as cooperative as possible, and that’s what I’ve been with respect to everything. As far as I’m concerned I’ve got nothing to hide and I’ll cooperate. Every time I’ve been asked to cooperate, I’ve cooperated. In terms of what happens in the future, I’m not going to comment on that, but that is what I’ve done in the past.

“I think only a fool would be unconcerned about any kind of commission or investigation in this political town and in this political climate. Having said that, again, because I feel like I’ve got nothing to hide and I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m not worried about the truth, so long as what we’re talking about is the truth and things don’t become politicized.”

Related: Talk of Truth Commission sparks conflict

Illustration: Matt Mahurin

President Barack Obama took a major step toward undoing the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration on Thursday, issuing four executive orders that lay out an unequivocal path to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, constructing a new legal and policy architecture for terrorism detainees, and ending the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” regime.

Both civil libertarians and ex-CIA officials involved in interrogations and detentions policies hailed the changes.

“It’s a great leap forward in terms of respect for human rights,” said John Kiriakou, the retired CIA official who supervised the early interrogation of Al Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah in 2002. “From the very beginning, the CIA should not have been in the business of enhanced interrogation techniques and detentions.” CIA interrogators waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, but not while Kiriakou supervised the interrogation.

Under the executive orders issued Thursday, the CIA’s interrogators cannot question detainees using “any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2 22.3.” That manual was rewritten by the Army in 2006 to reemphasize its compliance with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. laws banning torture. The Bush administration took an unyielding stance toward exempting CIA interrogations from that manual and those laws. But the Obama administration revoked all Bush administration executive orders from September 11, 2001 onward “concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals,” and directed the attorney general to conduct a thorough review of all other “directives, orders, and regulations” on the subject issued by the Bush administration that are no longer applicable.

Obama further instructed the military to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. A different executive order empanelled a cabinet-level task force to determine what should be done with the roughly 245 detainees still held at the Cuban naval base, as well as determining “lawful options for the disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations” in the future.

In testimony Thursday morning to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ret. Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama’s nominee to lead the 16-agency intelligence community, repeatedly underscored his opposition to torture. “Torture is not moral, it’s not legal and it’s not effective,” Blair stated. While the director of national intelligence-designate would not say whether he considered waterboarding torture, he told Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), “There will be no waterboarding on my watch, there will be no torture on my watch.”

Kiriakou said that the reaction to Obama’s harmonization of interrogations policy would get “a very positive reaction” inside the CIA. “There are people at CIA who engaged in what were certified as enhanced [interrogation] techniques, but were never supportive of it,” he said. “This should make people very happy. No one wants to be in harm’s way [legally]. Despite what the Bush White House and Bush Justice Department said was legal, I think people at the CIA understood that this was not legal and [the techniques] were torture.”

Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of CIA operations in Europe during the Bush administration’s first term, agreed. “These people aren’t monsters,” Drumheller said. “They were doing what they were told, and what was the policy of the [Bush] administration.”

The reaction from civil libertarians was uniformly jubilant. Linda Gustitus, president of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, said Obama “has already changed the world with respect to America’s use of torture.” Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies said the orders represented an “extraordinary first step towards ending the illegalities and abuses of the last seven years.” Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch, said the interrogations order “makes meaningful the US commitment not to torture detainees” and that “President Obama has rejected the abusive practices of the last seven-and-a-half years.” Caroline Fredrickson, Washington director of the ACLU, said Obama had given the U.S. “a much-needed and significant break from the Bush administration policies that, with utter disregard for our Constitution, trampled our nation’s values and ideals.”

Progressive members of Congress who fought against the Bush administration’s detentions and interrogations apparatus joined in their enthusiasm for Obama’s move. “President Obama’s first days in office have been a triumph for the rule of law,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), a member of both the intelligence and the judiciary committees. Added Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence committee and chairman of a special House panel on intelligence oversight, “Today’s orders will begin the process of putting our detainee policies back on sound legal footing while maintaining our ability to get actionable intelligence.”

Holt added in a phone interview, “If you outlaw torture in all its specifics [as the executive order does], I don’t really care about a general statement. I’m really pleased.” He noted that when Obama was an Illinois state senator, Obama wrote a law requiring all police interrogations to be videotaped, which Holt has long argued should be standard CIA and military practice as well.

Senators at Blair’s hearing expressed some concern over whether Obama’s executive orders had left loopholes for CIA interrogations and detentions that would contravene the bans on abuse and cruel and unusual punishment. Officials scrambled to reassure senators and journalists that there would be no such exemptions. While Blair testified that he would not wish to see operational specifics of interrogation techniques made public, he declared that he was “not saying ‘Here’s the document, and then, just kidding, here’s the real stuff.’” Similarly, at a background briefing at the White House on the new orders, a White House legal official told reporters that there would be no “reintroducing techniques that are inconsistent with the Army Field Manual.”

The Center for National Security Studies’ Martin agreed. “I don’t think there’s a real loophole for the CIA, although any president can always undo an order that he’s signed,” she said. “But
ordering the CIA to close its detenion centers is an enormous step, as it would take substantial time and resources to open them again.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, blasted the closure of Guantanamo Bay as irresponsible. “During these troubled times, GITMO facilitates the necessary function of gathering intelligence and keeping America’s most dangerous enemies in custody,” Price said in a statement. “Closing the facility without a plan in place to replicate those functions is irresponsible.” Yet Obama’s order directs both the military and the cabinet to come up with precisely such plans.

Drumheller hoped that the administration would engage in some sort of reckoning with the notion, put forward without evidence by senior Bush officials for seven years, that the Bush administration’s interrogation program actually provided valuable intelligence in the struggle against Al Qaeda. “What really did come out?” Drumheller asked. “There should be an honest appraisal of [the program] not just the first few months, but all these years. It would give an idea why [the use of torture] probably isn’t a good idea.”

Kiriakou, who had more hands-on experience with the interrogation regime than nearly anyone in the intelligence community, was satisfied simply to see the program end. “It’s finally time that regulations fell in line with reality,” he said.

Spencer Ackerman is National Security Reporter at the Washington Independent.

Anticipating the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Twin Cities photographer Alec Soth compiled a series of photos entitled, “The Last Days of W.” Taking its title from a poem by Lester B. Morrison, the series (and book) offers a poetic look at the country George W. Bush leaves behind. Shot in Minnesota and across the United States, the works represent “a panoramic look at a country exhausted by its catastrophic leadership.”

“In assembling this collection of pictures I’ve made over the last eight years, I guess I’m not really trying to accomplish much at all. But as President Bush once said, ‘One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.’”

Priscilla, Los Angeles, California

RNC, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Whether dawn or dusk,
Don Knotts or the deputy,
There is nothing left but gas

You’ve exhausted

You’ve laughed your head off
Wrapped it in black burlap
And bounced on the branch
Till sticky with candy and mâché.

Now the ranch is quiet,
Brush cleared,
Fields burnt,
Almost bored.

These are the last days of W.

—Lester B. Morrison

Osama, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Related: Alec Soth on photographing the Minnesota Senate recount
And: Imagining Bush: Artists on the official presidential portraits

George W. Bush, in his portrait by Robert Anderson, sits before a flowering white lily, symbol of innocence in Christian iconography.

Legs splayed, arms on knees, a casual white shirt with pocket flaps instead of the traditional suit and tie: In his official portrait, unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery last month, George W. Bush seems to be reinforcing a message that perhaps his presidency didn’t: He’s the guy you’d want to have a beer with, not necessarily the kind of diplomat you’d expect in the Oval Office.

While the portrait has generated criticism, little of it has been about the art itself. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called on the museum to change the painting’s label, which referred to ”the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” In a letter to the gallery’s director, Sanders wrote, “When President Bush and Vice President Cheney misled our country into the war in Iraq, they certainly cited the attacks on September 11, along with the equally specious claim that Iraq possessed vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The notion, however, that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, or that one ‘led to’ the other, has been widely and authoritatively debunked.” The gallery has since changed the label (pdf).

To combat the apparent lack of critical discourse, especially locally, concerning the paintings of the first couple — Bush was painted by his Yale classmate Robert Anderson, while his wife’s portrait was done by Aleksander Titovets — I asked various artists, curators and critics with local connections to share their thoughts on the portraits. The responses ranged from the comical (Bush looks like he’s an adult-diapers ad) to the meta (in 2009, why is an oil painting still the standard for official portraiture?) to the art historical (Bush’s choice of a white shirt and white lilies, a Christian symbol of purity).

Here’s what those who responded had to say.

A placid Laura Bush, painted by Aleksander Titovets

Max Andrews, former visual arts curatorial fellow at the Walker Art Center; co-founder of the Barcelona-based curatorial office Latitudes:

“It would be better in seeds by Lillian Colton!”

(Andrews was featured in my 2006 piece, “Agit-crop,” which mentioned his contribution to the Minnesota State Fair crop art contest, a seedy depiction of Homeland Security’s terror threat-level indicator.)

Rich Barlow, Minneapolis-based painter and musician:

“All of the portraits strike me more as ‘illustrations’ than ‘paintings.’ The two presidents [Bush and Bill Clinton] both look like illustrations from those pictorial hardcover children’s books on historical figures. Hillary’s is interesting in its Renaissance portrait reference — but it looks like an illustrator’s idea of what that would look like and like it was too reliant on a photo, as they all do. The Laura Bush portrait seems to me like it will age the most poorly. It just feels corny, like an illustration from the cover of a ‘women’s fiction’ book, or again, like a children’s book illustration — less of a ‘great people of history’ book than the presidents, more of an image that is condescending to the children with its insistence on making her look more friendly and approachable.

“Further, a question: Why do official portraits all have to be paintings in this day and age? It’s weird that there is still this idea that a painting is more legitimate than a photograph, yet I feel that these paintings are less legitimate as art than many excellent photographic portraits are.”

Frank Gaard, Minneapolis painter:

“[Bush's portrait] looks like an ad for Viagra or adult diapers. Very bizarre portrait of president’s spouse looks like ad for women’s personal products. Then it’s the sheer narcissism, having herself painted as if she was 30 years old or younger. Sometimes she seems like the real idiot of the pair. You know, like George W. didn’t want a girl who was smarter than him!”

Dan Ibarra, graphic designer and co-founder of Aesthetic Apparatus:

“This newly revealed portrait of Bush reminds me of a moment from the NPR radio program Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me in which host Peter Sagal brought up an interview from 2006 in which the president was quoted as saying the best moment of his presidency was ‘catching a 7.5-pound perch on my lake.’ After the initial laughter died down, Roy Blount Jr., quickly replied, ‘In his defense, I think he’s right.’

“In that same sense, I think this portrait is actually a pretty perfect reflection of the presidency. Sitting in front of you in the portrait is not a man who reflects any respected decision-making power nor does his visage invoke respect or honor. He doesn’t even desire that impression.

“George W. Bush’s entire identity was based upon this personal profile that — with all his colloquialisms, accent and mispronunciations — he was an Everyman, an average American. And this portrait reflects this succinctly and effectively; no tie, sitting on a couch, not even really at any recognizable place of business. The foundational flaw with this portrait, and with the entire Bush presidency, is that this would be an interesting portrait for a Fortune 500 CEO or a city politician. But the last thing this world needs is an American president that was not at his utmost level of professionalism and intelligence. Yes, I relate to an Everyman, but I don’t want him for my president. George W. Bush is proof of what happens. And this portrait is proof that he makes no apologies for that.”

Todd Norsten, artist and 2006 Whitney Biennial participant:

“I hope that he can perform a miracle similar to the loaves and fishes with the vase behind his left shoulder, so that more Americans can have a pot to piss in.”

Mason Riddle, St. Paul-based critic and writer on visual arts, architecture and design; former director of Minnesota Percent for Art in Public Places program:

“In Christian iconography, the color white and the flowering lily usually signify innocence and purity; it is the flower of the Virgin Mary and is an attribute of Archangel Gabriel. In some instance it can symbolize chastity. A smiling President Bush dresses casually in a white shirt, backgrounded by a vase of blooming lilies. Given that today is President Bush’s last full day in power, we can only reflect on what poor or misrepresentative fashion color (Bush’s white shirt) and flora choices (vase of blooming white lilies) these are. Wars, ambitious deregulation leading to economic collapse, loss of world respect, torture and environmental degradation. The color white does not come to mind. (Although his AIDS effort is laudatory.) Given Bush’s evangelical enthusiasms, and his professed inside communiqués with God, one can only surmise that the President predetermined these choices. But sanctioned by God? With that said, the portrait likeness is good, a casual, smiling W — thank our lucky stars there is no audio. Go hither to Texas past-president; do good, and cross not our path again.

“Laura Bush’s rather impressionistic portrait is a fair likeness, when she was perhaps about 15 pounds lighter. Sitting in a flowery, decorative, Symbolist-like interior, Mrs. Bush is pleasant looking — and expressively opaque as always. But, Mrs. Bush has never really revealed her thoughts about the events of the last eight years, has she? Whatever her thoughts, someone must be President Bush’s wife — Laura wears the role well. Stand by your man.”

Cameron Wittig, Minneapolis-based photographer:

I think this portrait is a total success!

It’s no surprise that he’s sitting down. But not only that — he’s barely sitting. He’s failing at sitting down. There appears to be nothing supporting him, he is floating, in a crouched position, in space. Perfect!

His feet are cropped off. The means by which the man is physically connected to any earthly reality — gone. Not only gone, the artist signs his name through the ankle, as if performing surgery on an unnecessary limb.

A chest of drawers, containing who knows what kind of secrets, slightly masked by a bouquet of white lilies. Whoa, hey look! Lilies!

It’s apparent the painter wasn’t given an actual sitting with the President. Why bother? Laura or one of the twins probably peeled the image from a sticky-page family album that had been gathering dust on a shelf in the Crawford den for several years. A 4×6 glossy printed at Walmart. Presidential portrait — put it in the mail and strike it off the list!

Good art is always ruined by too much deliberation. Go with your gut, then go to bed. Hang it in the National Gallery; it’s done to perfection.

9/11. Warrantless wiretapping. Two wars. Jack Abramoff. CIA black flights. Abu Ghraib. The apparently fake turkey photo-op. Gitmo. “Mission Accomplished.” Bank bailouts. Playing guitar while New Orleans submerged. The Bush years have been, at the least, memorable, and at worst surreal. So perhaps a fitting way to remember his two-term presidency is through a look at MAD magazine covers created over the last eight years. More covers after the jump, plus other memories of the reign of “43.”

Bush’s “dumbest moments” reminds us of the president’s infamous (and un-asked-for) shoulder massage of German chancellor Angela Merkel (here with a soundtrack by Ludacris), as well as memorable gaffes like his statement about how hard it is for single moms “to put food on your family.”

Slate’s list of “top 25 Bushisms of all time” includes a few forgotten quips, like his 2007 comment that “I’ve heard [British Prime Minister Tony Blair has] been called Bush’s poodle. He’s bigger than that.”

Our sister site The Washington Independent looks at the foreign and domestic “pols that most regret supporting Bush“ — including our own former Sen. Norm Coleman.

Harper’s dedicates a gigantic edition of its famed Index to the Bush administration. A sample:

Days after Hurricane Katrina hit that Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1

Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sending federal troops into New Orleans: 4

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

And local blogger Jeff Fecke, formerly of MnIndy, has been doing his own rundown of the Bush years at Moderate Left, but perhaps the best closer is this music video he reminds us of: the less-than-prophetic conservative hard-rock anthem, “Bush was right!”

Via GOOD.

Click to enlarge.

“[T]his new Bachmann is so careful,” writes The Hills Betsy Rothstein. “She holds her head perfectly still and during a 30-minute interview appears to be completely in control. Her answers are brief. She offers smiles, but they last just a few seconds.”

Such reserve will be on display at the inauguration of Barack Obama, who won’t be getting any Bachmann lip time, contrary to her campaign-season remark to the contrary. Asked about a repeat of her Bush kiss, which she basically camped out for, she replied, “Will I be sitting in the well? Probably not.”