How obsessed is President Bush with people's exercise habits?
Bush, who prides himself on his ability to judge character, seems to use exercise as a proxy for discipline, complaining about former economic aid Lawrence Lindsey's failure to exercise before firing him and asking possible Supreme Court nominee J. Harvie Wilkinson III about his workout habits.
Now Samantha Power reports in the New Yorker that Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envoy who was killed in Iraq, impressed Bush with his "lean physique," causing the president to say "You must work out":
The Americans were surprisingly enthusiastic about Vieira de Mello. A few weeks before the invasion, he had pulled off an unusual feat for a U.N. official: he had charmed President George W. Bush. On March 5th, at a meeting in the Oval Office, the President, impressed by Vieira de Mello’s lean physique, greeted him by grasping his shoulder and saying admiringly, “You must work out.”
Is this really how the President of the United States assesses the character of the people he interacts with? Yikes.
This method is some what more preferable to looking into a man's eyes to judge his soul, a la Bush judging Vladimir Putin
Posted by: Jake | January 14, 2008 at 06:37 PM
Hmmm... Must be why he likes David Petraeus so much:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/david-petraeus.html
Posted by: ambivalentmaybe | January 18, 2008 at 07:12 PM
Hmmm, doesn't Obama like to work out even more than Bush?
Posted by: david | January 31, 2009 at 05:04 AM