f anything was funnier than George W. Bush's D-minus performance on Boston newsman Andy Hiller's pop quiz, it was Trent Lott's attempt to defend it.
By now you have heard how the GOP front-runner embarrassed himself in his one-on-one interview with Hiller, a Boston television newsman. Bush was asked to name the political leaders in ''four hot spots'' - Chechnya, Taiwan, Pakistan, and India - and managed to identify only one, Taiwan's President Lee. He did know that Pakistan is ruled by a general who recently seized power in a coup d'etat. The general's name he couldn't recall, but he did seem to approve of the coup. ''It appears he's going to bring stability to the country,'' Bush said, ''and I think that's good news for the subcontinent.''
That last, by the way, is not a wholly indefensible position - Nawaz Sharif, the deposed prime minister, turns out to have been a corrupt thief. But when Bush was asked in a later interview how he could support the overthrow of an elected government, he promptly denied having done so. ''Of course not,'' he told Sam Donaldson. ''No, no, no, no, no, no.''
That was last week. This week Lott, the Senate majority leader, rode to Bush's defense. On Brit Hume's TV show, Lott brushed off the Hiller quiz as ''strictly a media thing ... a Washington, D.C., thing.'' Hume politely pointed out that the interview aired in Boston.
''Well, that's even worse,'' was Lott's snappy riposte. ''I mean, if there's any place in the country worse than Washington, it's Boston, for goodness sakes.... They are known for, you know, their liberalism and for that sort of activity in the media.''
Well now. I am hardly one to gainsay liberal media bias or to make excuses for Boston's knee-jerk politics. Certainly something is out of balance in a state that sends 12 Democrats and zero Republicans to Congress. But if Andy Hiller is a left-wing attack dog for asking a presidential candidate to name the prime minister of India, what must Senator Lott think of Alex Trebeck?
In retrospect, it is clear that Bush's real failing wasn't that he didn't know who Atal Bihari Vajpayee was, but that he didn't know who his interviewer was.
Hiller has played the quizmaster with politicians before, notably in 1984, when he grilled the candidates running in that year's US Senate race in Massachusetts. Congressman Ed Markey, a very liberal Bay State Democrat, assuredly remembers the ordeal. A five-term House veteran, Markey was unable to name the Israeli prime minister, estimate the size of the defense budget, or identify the countries in which the United States was deploying nuclear missiles. Bush might take some comfort in that. Or maybe not. Markey dropped out of the Senate race soon after his Hiller encounter.
Is Bush unsuited for the White House because he doesn't know who the Chechen leader or Pakistani strongman is? Of course not. Not one American in a thousand would have known those names. Hiller's quiz would have revealed more had he asked Bush to identify the Canadian and Russian prime ministers. Those are names familiar to any foreign policy dilettante; if Bush had drawn a blank on them, it would have said something about his readiness for the international stage.
In truth, the most worrisome response in the whole interview was the one that came first. Responding to the suggestion that he is weak on foreign policy, Bush said: ''No, I've got a clear vision of where I want to lead America.''
Does he? Granted, the election is a year away, but Bush has been the GOP front-runner for a long time now. If his vision of America's place in the world is so clear, why does nobody seem to know what it is?
Bush needn't apologize for not being a master of minutiae. If the Clinton and Carter administrations taught us anything, it is that policy wonks and detail freaks do not necessarily good presidents make. President Bush was a walking Rolodex of international politicians. Yet his own foreign policy amounted to little more than a preference for the status quo and a refusal to condemn totalitarian brutality.
By contrast, Ronald Reagan, a president who sometimes failed to recognize members of his own Cabinet, would have flunked the Hiller quiz. And it wouldn't have mattered in the least. The humblest American voter and the most arrogant foreign tyrant knew what Reagan stood for. What does George W stand for?
Take another look at that TV encounter. (You can watch it on line at www.whdh.com; click on ''The Hiller Instinct.'') What is striking is the look on Bush's face - it is a mocking sneer, a gaze of contempt for the reporter daring to ask him questions he didn't have prebaked answers for. His manner drips with disdain - disdain not just for the quiz, but for the very idea of judging a man by what he knows.
Bush's sneer puts me in mind of his father's administration, in which popularity was the measure of all things. In 1989, George Mitchell, then the Senate majority leader, rapped Bush Sr. for the ''timidity'' of his foreign policy. James Baker scornfully refused to hear the criticism. ''When the president of the United States is rocking along with a 70 percent approval rating,'' he said, witheringly, comments from critics could be ignored. Is that W's attitude too?
A lot of people like the governor. A lot of other people aren't sure what to make of him. Maybe it's time Bush wiped the smirk off his face and started taking their questions seriously.
Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist.
