Apparently the “Bush in Calgary Story” is big somewhere — Calgary, I guess. I am not one to pooh-pooh the pumping of “Big Notable” visiting this or that city into Major News — and at the moment Bush says he’ll say nothing about President Obama so no news is going to come out of “Bush in Calgary” (unless you want to analyze Bush and Cheney as engaged in a “good cop / bad cop” act.) When Bush the President came into the city for a fund-raiser in 2002 it was a big story — the tv media fixated on Bush in town, if I recall right The Oregonian as well with the Portland Tribune running on the thousands in the street this occasioned.
But when George Herbert Walker Bush visited the sleepy little Eastern Washington center of Yakima in 1994(?) 1995(?), along with a few other distinguished people of World Importance and Dennis Miller and a location that former presidents, distinguished people of World Importance, and Dennis Miller don’t tend to track through (I’d say a lot less than Calgary) — it could not be categorized as “big news” in Yakima. I wonder what is the difference.