Poor Richard’s Smackdown

[[W I T S]] * In honor of what would today have been Benjamin Franklin’s 300th birthday, Daily Kos blogger “Bill in Portland, Maine” posits a six-round debate between George W. Bush and the fun-loving statesman, editor, and inventor from Philadelphia. Not surprisingly, the eminently quotable American Founder gets the better of our foundering prez in imagined (yet unimaginable) exchanges such as this one:

Bush: I’m a uniter, not a divider. I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another.
Franklin: Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.

Read on. But then, I don’t really need to tell you that, do I? As old Ben himself once observed, “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.”

READ MORE: “Poor Richard’s Redemption,” by Stacy Schiff (The New York Times); “What’s Benjamin Franklin’s Birthday?: Why It’s 11 Days Later Than It Used to Be,” by Daniel Engber (Slate).