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Posted by: David Bunch

In an interview with Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove revealed the following about the President's avid book reading (of course-Rove is a master political strategist so we may want to keep that in the back of our minds). But with that disclaimer, here's the portion of the interview in question:

RUSH: You said that he's [Bush] a voracious reader. Tell people. You and he have a reading contest.
KARL ROVE: We do. We do. It happened by accident. We generally gossip on Sundays, and the Sunday before New Year's of last year, 2006, we were gossiping and I could hear Laura in the background and the president said to me, "Do you have any good New Year's resolutions? I gotta figure out a good New Year's resolution," and I said, "I'm a big reader." When I moved to Washington we brought 158 cartons of books, and, you know, I love to read. It's a great way to relax and a great way to learn. I said, "Well, yeah, my object in 2006 is to read a book a week. My object is to do 52 books in a year," and he said, "Great," sort of dismissed it and went on. Well, about the 2nd or 3rd of January we're in the Oval Office waiting for the vice president and a couple of others to straggle into a meeting and he looked at me, and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" So we went off to the races on a book contest and we kept track of books, and I leaped to an early lead, and he began a refrain which he's used a lot which is that he was in second place because he was the leader of the Free World and had a real job to do, which sort --
RUSH: (Laughs.)
KARL ROVE: I mean, look, this is competitive, but I mean, come on, please. But no, we've had a great contest. It's been a great experience the last year and a half. We've been trading book suggestions back and forth.
RUSH: How many books have you guys read?
KARL ROVE: I beat him last year, 110 to 94, and I'm ahead this year. I won't give you the total because it would crush you, and again he keeps saying, "Look, I'm the leader of the Free World, but, you know, I won the first year." In fact, it was almost... It was very funny.
RUSH: Wait. He's not reading little pamphlets. (Laughing.)
KARL ROVE: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! In fact, we both agreed upon a Mutually Assured Destruction. When we got too competitive last year, we both started reading John D. MacDonald mysteries, which are really delicious. He's a wonderful writer, a Floridian, who writes a wonderful set of mysteries, Travis McGee mysteries, and we both decided that we loved them. We were reading them quickly, enjoying them a lot, and then we realized this was being far too competitive. So we limited the number of John D. MacDonald mysteries we were both reading, so we could get back to the serious stuff.