Overzealous, indeed

It's amazing that with an administration so disciplined, focused, and keenly aware of image management, their public events are so chaotic, with "overzealous volunteers" running roughshod over Rove's minions.

This isn't the first time the White House has had an overzealous volunteer. In 2003, an overzealous volunteer was blamed for an incident in which Bush gave a speech about the economy in front of some boxes wrongfully stamped with the "Made in the USA" label. They were actually made in China.

"This was the work of an overzealous advance volunteer," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said at the time, according to CNN.com.

Fargo City Commissioner Linda Coates, whose name was on the list but who attended Bush's speech anyway, also doubts this is the product of a local volunteer.

Coates said when she went through the metal detectors at the Bison Sports Arena Thursday, an official said to her, "You are of course welcome to go in. We're sorry about this. We heard from the White House that it was the work of an overzealous staffer."

Though Coates said she doesn't know whose "staffer" he was talking about, he didn't call the person a volunteer.

"The enigmatic local volunteer is typically blamed for these types of heavy-handed moves," she said. "Impossible to trace and leaves the administration staff completely off the hook."

Reminds me of when some "overzealous" midshipman hung that "Mission Accomplished" banner behind Dear Leader some months agao.

Thanks to Josh for the link, who, by the way, has a must-read encapsulation of the basic battle between good and evil that is the privatization debate. It's long, but it's important and doesn't contain too much of that tedious math stuff that makes the Social Security debate so eye-glazingly dull for so many of our fellow citizens, especially the journalists assigned to cover it.