Why Does Bush Hate America?

From CBS:

When the Washington Nationals play their home opener this afternoon at RFK Stadium, the president won't be there to toss out the ceremonial first pitch.

For the second straight year, reports the Washington Post, President Bush has turned down an invitation to participate in a Washington baseball tradition started by President William Howard Taft in 1910.

Mr. Bush was there in 2005, to help celebrate the return of the nation's pastime to the nation's capital after a 33-year absence, but last year he left the first-pitch duties to Vice President Cheney. This year, neither man will be there.

The Post says that except for during World Wars I and II, only two other presidents have missed two opening days in a row – Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon.

So why can't Mr. Bush, an ardent baseball fan and former part owner of the Texas Rangers, make it out to the ballpark this year? A White House spokeswoman says Mr. Bush will be in Washington today, but "it's not possible with his schedule. … It just wasn't going to work out."

With the president's approval ratings stuck below 40 percent, was Mr. Bush concerned that he might get booed? "No," the spokeswoman said. "Certainly not."

No, certainly not. It's just that he had a very, very important meeting to make, with three whole minutes of comments to small business owners about his totally awesome ongoing Health Savings Accounts initiative, and then later the Naval Academy football team was waiting in the Rose Garden to receive the 'Commander-in-Chief Trophy'.

You can see how all that would have precluded him from scheduling an Opening Day first pitch. After all, how was he supposed to know that Opening Day happens in the beginning of April? And really, the midshipmen have been waiting for their trophy since the Army-Navy game in December, so asking them to come some other day would have been rude. Don't even think that Mr. Bush preferred to be surrounded by men duty bound and under his command rather than a big crowd of independent and opinionated American citizenry, oh no.

The President is just such a busy man that he couldn't even get around to awarding a football trophy until baseball season, so how could we expect him to fit in an opening pitch? After all, it took him weeks to be able to fit in a visit to Walter Reed after that scandal broke.

No, I'm sure it had nothing at all to do with concerns about the booing.