"Don't report what he says. Report what he means!"

The late mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago (aka Richard I) shared at least one thing with former president George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and Vice-President Joe Biden: a tendency to trip over his tongue. He was apt to say some rathr amazing things at times, like "The police aren't there to create disorder. The police are there to preserve disorder."

The media has always tended to downplay Mr. Obama's verbal infelicities (until Mitt Romney's commercials deprived them of that option), and sort of cluck indulgently at Mr.Biden's. Mr. Bush's, of course, were the occasion for full-blown mockery, constant re-plays on the news, and no end of jokes from Letterman and Leno. Mayor Daley's were mentioned on occasion by Chicago newspapers. This did not sit well with the mayor's press secretary, who was- ironically- named Bush.

"Don't report what he says," Bush the Democrat exhorted the press. "Report what he means."

This seems to have become the mantra of the Obama campaign as well. From the private sector doing fine, to small business owners not having built their own businesses, POTUS seems to be developing a pattern of sticking his foot in his mouth with a frequency and gusto that would have left the MSM roaring with laughter if he were a Republican. Instead, the media have half-heartedly acknowledged the regrettable choices of words POTUS seems to indulge in so often during this campaign, with an unspoken subtext of "Don't pay attention to what he says. Pay attention to what he means."

That sort of boils down to the message of all the backtracking Mr. Obama has been doing of late regarding what, in all charity, are doubtless merely verbal miscues. But miscues or not, the disturbing question remains: even if the president doesn't really mean what he says, what does he mean?