All Intensive Purposes

Bruce Reed catches the President talking like a Hemingway character, and not in a good way.

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway describes the American expatriate, "Mrs. Braddocks, who in the excitement of talking French was liable to have no idea what she was saying." Bush is the same way with English.

Here's Bush at Monday's press conference, reflecting upon his administration's impotence abroad:

Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy. This is—but war is not a time of joy.

Here's Georgette Hobin, a Frenchwoman reacting to Jake Barnes's impotence in The Sun Also Rises:

Isn't anywhere else [like Paris] … Happy, hell! … It isn't bad here. ... Oh, that dirty war!