PageSix

Rhetorical query

THE stunning election-night success left White House spokesman Ari Fleischer feeling a little bolder in his usual testy briefing with reporters yesterday. When Helen Thomas, the dean of the press corps - who is more outspokenly liberal than her peers - asked Fleischer if George Bush believed the election results gave him a "mandate" for "going to war with Iraq, privatizing Social Security, weakening the Civil Service Commission and so forth?" Fleischer told the ancient reporter: "Helen, you sound like a commercial that didn't work."

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2002