CNN's Paul Begala Says He's Always Found It 'Silly' to Mock Presidential Vacations: Wrong

July 17th, 2010 6:28 AM

CNN.com's Kristi Keck filed a story on Friday reporting the Republican National Committee started a website mocking President Obama's series of vacations and other actions during the BP oil spill. The headline was "Obama vacation brings rest, relaxation and rebuke." The story's pull quote came from Democratic partisan and CNN regular Paul Begala, who eventually said something incredibly false about his own consistency on the president-bashing:

Paul Begala, a CNN contributor and former adviser to President Clinton, said that vacationing or not, "The president is the president wherever he is.

"I thought it was silly when people attacked Bush for going on vacation, so I'll be consistent and say it's silly when people attack President Obama for going on vacation," he said.

"Of all of the concerns that Americans may have, they do not need to worry whether President Obama is a hard-working man. They may agree or disagree with his policies, but there is just no doubt that the guy is busting his rear end."

Why does Begala have to be so shameless (and Clintonesque) about saying he never mocked Bush's vacations? Googling brings this up within seconds from Gary Bauer's website, a CNN transcript from October 11, 2004. This is the light-hearted Bush-mockery at show's end:

It's no surprise if you've been losing sleep over what's been going on in the White House. The Better Sleep Council wanted to find out which candidate would make people lose more sleep over the next four years.

Their ingenious poll of registered voters shows that President Bush has a 42-40 percent edge as the one who would lead you to have more sleepless nights. Well, the good news for President Bush is they did choose him, as well, as Commander in Sleep. Forty-four percent say he seems the more well rested candidate of the two.

Probably because he spends so much time on vacation, Gary? I don't know.