It looks as if the media is out to Quaylize George W. Bush.

You know, make him look stupid.

A couple weeks ago a reporter blindsided George W. with questions about foreign leaders that Madeleine Albright probably couldn't have answered.

Bush couldn't name Pervaiz Musharraf, the leader of Pakistan. He also missed Aslan Maskhadov, of Chechnya, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, of India.

He got Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui. He said, "Lee."

I guess this really doesn't bother me that much. I haven't made up my mind about George W., the candidate, but the ambush questioning by the Boston television reporter certainly didn't have much of an impact on me.

Let's face it. The reporter engineered a quiz for Bush to fail. And fail he did. Frankly, I was more disappointed that Bush allowed himself to be drawn into the quiz than that he flunked it.

But Bush has made a few other gaffes, too. He confused Slovakia with Slovenia. He said Kosovites instead of Kosovars, Grecians instead of Greeks and Timorians instead of Timorese.

None of these things would seem to be that big a deal on the face of it. The phrase "So what?" comes to mind.

Do these things really matter? Do they disqualify him as a candidate? Of course not.

But these things will loom large in the campaign anyway because the media will make sure they do.

I think the media will hammer on George W. as intellectually unfit for office.

Fact is, George W. is not a dummy.

His academic pedigree is pure bred.

His high school years were spent at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. He graduated from Harvard and Yale.

But again, so what? The man is 50-something. Who cares where he went to college 33 years ago?

It's irrelevant.

It's akin to somebody coming in the newspaper to apply for a tech job and telling me he has a degree in computer science from 1978. That degree is useless in today's world. It's what the guy has done since that matters.

But that won't stop the media from harping on George W. as intellectually challenged, just like they did with Dan Quayle.

Let the Quaylization begin.

New Yorker Magazine last week published George W.'s undergraduate grades from Yale University. He earned a degree there in 1968. George W. has said several times in interviews that he got "gentleman C's" in college. He did. Most of his grades were in the 70s, according to the New Yorker.

So what? Who cares?

Associated Press, apparently.

AP moved a "news" story this week about George W.'s advisers. In my view, the story wasn't news at all. It belonged on an op-ed page. It was fully laced with opinion and pejorative language.

There is no way the story was news, but there it was on the national report anyway.

It read:

"After prepping at Andover and graduating from Harvard and Yale, there's no doubt that George W. Bush has a gold-seal academic pedigree.

Yet a question remains: Does the Texas governor and Republican presidential front-runner have the intellectual heft to be the leader of the free world?

The question is fueled by Bush's record as a school socialite and lackadaisical student, his carefree demeanor and slip-ups such as calling Greeks 'Grecians' and fumbling over the names of world leaders.

It is brought into full relief when Bush is compared to the sitting president, a Rhodes scholar and policy savant.

Left unanswered, it can be politically damaging, as former Vice President Dan Quayle found."

Almost makes you well up with tears to think that Bill can't run again, doesn't it?

And, of course, we have the Quayle parallel.

"A question remains," the writer tell us, "Does (George W.) have the intellectual heft to be a leader of the free world?" Who asked that question? The writer?

If you think this is going to stop anytime soon, think again. The media will be relentless. They will hunt down and magnify each misstep from now until election day.

Let's take a look back over some past presidents.

How did they register on the intellectual heft-o-meter?

Richard Nixon, the crook; Gerald Ford, the guy who whacked spectators with golf balls and fell down a lot; Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Georgia; Ronald Reagan, the actor; George Bush, the Navy aviator.

My guess is that if you wanted to, you could make anybody look dumb.

And I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with that if the media were equal-opportunity denigrators. But they aren't. They only seem to see the dumb in Republicans.

The AP on Bill Bradley:

"Bill Bradley's quest for the White House is a tall order, and so is his 'ultimate game' plan for action should he get there. He says he's up to both.

'I wouldn't have started this, I wouldn't have gotten into this, if I couldn't see my way through to being president, which means getting the nomination, and then winning the general election,' Bradley said Wednesday in an Associated Press interview."

The article went on to tell us all about Bradley's bold plan to revolutionize health care, combat poverty and bolster child care and agriculture.

I wonder why they didn't ask Bradley how making free throws qualifies him to be leader of the free world?

A couple weeks back, I harshly criticized Republicans for not passing campaign finance reform legislation.

Then I read a quote from Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is a leading opponent of reform.

He says Republicans need soft money to have any electoral success. The Democrats, he said, have the advantage of a liberal press and a leftist entertainment industry. The Republicans must counter that with unregulated money contributed to the party.

I still disagree, but these days, I'm finding it tougher to argue with him. [[In-content Ad]]