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Ranch
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 20—President George W. Bush’s failure to catch a fish after he spent two hours on his heavily stocked bass pond this afternoon was considered a defeat for Mr. Bush by most observers here, and one that would weaken his position in swapping fish stories with Democrats and Republican moderates in Congress. A White House spokesman’s comment that the President, being a serious conservationist, had “done catch-and-release one better” may have only worsened matters, since most of the press corps dismissed it as a desperate attempt at spin.
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 21—The President scored a solid victory today by working on the clearing of his nature trail for an hour and a half without injuring himself.
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 22—Eating scrambled eggs this morning for breakfast was seen as a victory for the President, who had been having his eggs sunny-side up for more than a week. The President prefers his eggs scrambled. White House officials have been unwilling to discuss the reasoning behind the apparently contradictory sunny-side-up policy. However, they are not directly denying a story that the Crawford ranch’s cook, Rosa Gonzales, had refused to serve scrambled eggs ever since the President, in an effort to compliment her, tried to pronounce the dish in Spanish—
huevos revueltos
—and came out with something that Ms. Gonzales understood as “very revolting.” It is not clear how the situation was resolved in a manner that permitted a return to scrambled eggs this morning, but White House officials did little to hide their jubilation.
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 23—White House spokesmen refused to elaborate on a terse announcement this morning that a two-year-old Hereford steer on the Bush ranch had stepped into a gopher hole and broken its leg—a defeat for the President.
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 24—Even George W. Bush’s harshest critics are acknowledging today that the weather has given the President an important victory. “The entire country has been suffering from a heat wave,” said a member of the White House staff who has been at the President’s ranch for three weeks, “but there can’t be any place quite as miserable as this.” Daniel Jonas, a Democratic pollster who specializes in issues of empathy, said, “Let’s face it: This is a big one for Bush.”
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 25—George W. Bush was served
huevos rancheros
for breakfast today—a serious defeat for the President, who does not like highly spiced food.
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 26—Republicans both here and in Washington were glowing today after George W. Bush apparently scored a big victory by losing at golf. “He’s just a regular guy with a bad slice,” one party loyalist said. “He knows loss. He understands loss.” The low scorer in the foursome, a wealthy oilman from Lubbock, won ten dollars from each of the other players. Late this afternoon, Democrats were saying that the episode might prove to be a defeat for Mr. Bush now that it is known that longtime family friends of the President’s parents came forward on the eighteenth green to cover his losses.
    CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 27—President Bush scored his biggest victory of the week this morning when Rosa Gonzales, his cook, posed, smiling, for a picture with him in the kitchen of the Crawford ranch. Although Ms. Gonzales has not been made available for interviews, the White House has formally denied that she ever referred to the President as “
la boquita de un gringo puro
”—roughly, “little gringo mouth.” In response to reporters’ questions at the photo opportunity, the President explained his views on how best to prepare eggs by sayingthat he is a uniter, not a divider. H. Cole Knudnik, an expert on presidential diet at the Brookings Institute, said, “The President was overdue for a clear-cut victory on this one, and he got it.”
    2001
“Whatta We Got for the Folks This Week?”
    The office of Pete Smithers, a senior editor