I’m glad, at least, that the turkey-and-trimmings-platter-was-a-prop story is at least on page A33 of the Washington Post and not the front-page. The whole thing seems ridiculously silly. I’ll buy it was a decoration no one put there in anticipation of the president picking it up. But if it was scripted, so what? (He did, by the way, touch real food later.) Of course this is what the story is all about, not some Thanksgiving dud turkey:

the foray has opened new credibility questions for a White House that has dealt with issues as small as who placed the “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the aircraft carrier Bush used to proclaim the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and as major as assertions about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of unconventional weapons and his ability to threaten the United States.

Earlier this week, Katie Couric actually had a neat “so-called” end-of-major-combat-ops construct when asking Paul Bremer about the supposed Bush admin lies or mishap. We defend that “Mission Accomplished” banner in the new issue of NRODT, by the way. From the Lincoln to the turkey: call it “leadership.”