The Pope is on a visit to Washington, and President Bush takes his guest out for an afternoon on the Potomac, sailing on the Presidential yacht, the Sequoia.
They're admiring the sights when, all of a sudden, the Holy Father's hat (zucchetto) blows off his head and out into the water. Secret Service guys start to launch a boat, but President Bush waves them off, saying, "Wait, wait. I'll take care of this. Don't worry."
Bush silently bows his head for a moment, mutters a few inaudible words, takes a final look towards the heavens, steps over the yacht's railing, sets his feet on the surface of the water, walks out to the floating zucchetto, bends over, picks the wet hat up, turns around, walks back to the yacht, and climbs back aboard.
Amid stunned silence and wide-eyed frozen faces, he hands the dripping hat to the Pope.
The next morning, editorials asking roughly the same rhetorical question appear in the New York Times, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Buffalo News, the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, the Minneapolis Tribune, the Denver Post, the Albuquerque Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, BBC Online, Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, and Stern: "How could Americans vote for a man who can't even swim?!"
(Thanks to Dick Thompson)
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