DERB DERB DERB WELL THE DERB IS THE VERB: I guess you would call this John Derbyshire piece a more Bush-apologetic version of that Fareed Zakaria article:

We don't understand — How badly George W. Bush travels. Never having been schooled in the fast repartee of a parliamentary debating chamber, Bush seems slow and inarticulate in response. Coming from the openly confessional tradition of Southern Christianity, he seems to foreigners to be religiose rather than religious. Having spent most of his life in a region with a strong sense of identity, he speaks his local dialect unselfconsciously, which makes him sound like a bumpkin to other English-speakers (and even to some Americans). Pronouncing "nuclear" as "noo-koo-luh" tells you nothing more about the man than that he comes from Texas and doesn't care who knows it. It is no more reprehensible than my pronouncing "schedule" with a "sh" instead of a "sk," and it is very unfair of non-Texans to snigger at it. They do, though, and I am not sure they are wrong to do so, bearing in mind what terrible responsibilities lie behind that word "nuclear."

Via the DVDVR. Of course, it only explains why Bush travels badly in the U.K., not everywhere else.