Airin' the Dirty Laundry

If anyone's surprised or embarrassed by Obama calling Kanye a jackass, then how about Bush Dub speculating about having Hillary's "fat a**" in the White House or Joe Biden being the "billionaire of bullsh*t." Yeah no joke, those gems and others are spilt in the latest memoir from the Bush White House, by former speech writer Matt Latimer.

Latimer's Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor, which goes on sale later this month is a tell all of the last 22 months in the Bush White House, from the Iraq surge to the economic meltdown.

GQ has reprinted a few excerpts — a rather amusing read on the anniversary of the Lehman collapse, and I dare say, how unsurprising the shocking incompetence was:

“This is the last bullet we have,” the president said at one point, referring to the bailout. “If this doesn’t work…” He shook his head, and his voice trailed off. That wasn’t good enough for me. If this doesn’t work, then what? We’re done? America is over? I looked around at everyone else. What does that mean?

Ed and the president decided to give a prime-time address to the nation, and Vice President Cheney was sent to the Hill to argue for our bill (a bill he may or may not have believed in) and was apparently hammered by House Republicans. Hours before the president was to speak to the country, Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign informed Josh Bolten that McCain was going to phone the president and urge him to call off the address and instead hold an emergency economic summit in Washington. If the president did speak that night, the McCain campaign didn’t want him to outline any specific proposal.

Of course, this threw the proverbial monkey wrench into our plans—and at the eleventh hour. I overheard the president call McCain’s plan “a stunt.” Dana Perino said the negotiations were nearly over, and suddenly he was going to swoop in and muck things up? The president’s political adviser, Barry Jackson, was blunt, calling McCain a “stupid prick.”

The economic team came in. Ed Gillespie, the president’s top communications adviser, came in. Tony Fratto, the deputy press secretary, was there. At one point there were twelve people crowded around our computer, trying to explain how the proposal worked. The economic advisers were disagreeing with each other.

There was