Prez Nearly Pretzel Capable, Say Spin Doctors

The White House announced today that President Bush has now fully recovered his pretzel capability and will soon be able to take on the challenging snack once again. His inability to ingest a fragment of hardened starch had been viewed by many of the electorate as a valid index of his ability to, say, lead a superpower.

In preparation for leaping the pretzel hurdle, the President has been practicing secretly with peanuts for several months now, and with a considerable measure of success, but it wasn’t until yesterday that his spin doctors declared him fully ready to commence a program of pretzel resistance enhancement, a strict regimen of physical and mental therapy that, if successful, will in time render the leader of the world's greatest superpower fully capable of eating a pretzel without falling down and hitting his face on the furniture. Sadly, this therapy will not affect his eloquence index.

It remains unclear however, when the President will actually consume his first pretzel since the one that left him dazed and with a bruised countenance, looking as though he were actually incapable of snacking, as is still claimed by a minority. "Our mandate has made it perfectly clear: that scurrilous assertion is even further from the truth than the President’s military record."

“Just because members of the general public continue to eat pretzels with impunity, without falling down or hurting themselves in any way, does not mean they’re capable of leading a superpower,” said the spin doctors, seeking to put a final stop to the general wonderment regarding the apparent pretzel vulnerability of the guy who’s leading the nation. “It's a matter of sensitivity. He fell off a mountain bike too, and believe it or not, a Segway. What can we say, the man has a talent! Moreover, he has no trouble with Cheese puffs.”

One incisive question heard at the presidential pretzel consumption press conference was: Will the doctors allow the president to eat a pretzel while riding a Segway? “Let’s not hurry things; the President is taking this rehab one step at a time; he will however, soon be able to eat a pretzel while invading another country. That is a clear measure of the progress he has achieved during his presidency."