A SIMPLE MAN

Anyone else find this a bit over the top?

Laura Bush: George Built Limestone Altar for Jenna's Wedding

President Bush has prepared one special wedding gift for daughter Jenna, Laura Bush revealed during a news conference on Monday.

"[It] was his idea to build this beautiful limestone altar," the First Lady told reporters of the now-permanent fixture at the family's Crawford, Texas ranch -- where their daughter will wed on May 10. "It's the same thing that our house is made of from a local quarry. And they're the ones that made it." ...

(Apparently this isn't a small item -- yesterday, on Good Morning America, the president described it as "a giant cross ... by our lake.")

I guess it's the permanence of the thing that creeps me out. After all, Bush is a guy who's regularly photographed backlit by what seem to be halos, as well as other Christian backdrops. And when he leaves office, I'm sure he expects, sooner or later, to be regarded as a sage -- and not just any sage, but a sage who speaks for the Almighty. (He does believe God works through him right now.)

Is it possible that this is partly a gift to himself -- that he assumes he'll someday hold forth about nefarious Democratic secular-humanist/elitist deeds, and his pronouncements will just so happen to take place at the ranch, where his backdrop will be this altar? And yet, heck, it was just something he had built for his daughter's wedding, so the press won't think it's odd at all that he's holding forth with his own personal cross in the background.

I wonder if Karl Rove is planning the entire wedding.