Bush's flub not edited on purpose?

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Sep 28, 2007 | by Ben Feller Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The White House has been setting the record a little too straight.

Anyone reading the official transcript of Bush's statement on education Wednesday would see that he said "children do learn."

Except that's not what he said.

Bush flubbed the line and said "childrens do learn" -- a particularly embarrassing gaffe given that he was surrounded by young students and talking about the importance of education. It also harked back to another infamous misstatement, when Bush rhetorically asked "Is our children learning?"

On Thursday, press secretary Dana Perino said the White House never meant to clean up Bush's language after the fact.

The White House transcript is distributed to reporters, posted on the Web and widely used as a lasting record of what Bush said.

Perino said no one in Bush's press operation had ordered the stenographers office to fix Bush's slip-up in the transcript.

She did, however, order that the transcript be amended later so that it would accurately include the president's mistake.

Sure enough, it now reads "childrens (sic) do learn."

"The integrity of the transcripts are very important to me, and I've made that clear," Perino told reporters.

Perino also tried to put the moment in perspective.

It is no secret, she said, that Bush is prone to make grammatical errors now and then. (Bush often pokes fun at himself for mangling a word or two.)

"He also is somebody, though, that gives a lot of public comments," Perino said. "And I think in the grand scheme of things, if any of us were -- well, maybe now I am -- monitored for such things, that we would all have slip-ups from time to time."