Dammit Jim, I'm not a doctor -- wait, I AM a doctor

According to Scott McClellan,

The White House backed away Wednesday from its own prediction that the economy will add 2.6 million new jobs before the end of this year, saying the forecast was the work of number-crunchers and that President Bush was not a statistician.

Hold on...doesn't Bush have an MBA from Harvard? Don't you have to know something about statistics to get out of business school?

Maybe it looks better in context:

Asked about the 2.6 million jobs forecast, McClellan said, "The president is interested in actual jobs being created rather than economic modeling."

He quoted Bush as saying, "I'm not a statistician. I'm not a predictor."

"We are interested in reality," McClellan said.

No, it doesn't look any better; apparently "not a statistician" means "not a person who believes that statistics mean anything at all".

UPDATE: Sadly, this must have been the most obvious retort of all time. See comments at Atrios here.
- posted by Don Porges @ 2/18/2004 02:47:00 PM |