Opinion: Breaking: Ex-Pres. Bush has trouble getting Dallas paper delivered

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(UPDATE below.)

And newspapers wonder why they’re in trouble.

Less than five weeks ago as the most powerful commander in chief of the world’s greatest superpower, President George W. Bush got his morning global intelligence briefing and had access to information that most of us don’t even know exists. Now, the Bushes have moved into a newly-purchased 8,000-square-foot private house on a cul-de-sac in the Preston Hollow section of north Dallas.

And everything’s going well. Except for one thing: Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush can’t seem to get the Dallas Morning News to start home delivery. Her friends have to bring her their copy come afternoon.

Mrs. Bush says they’ve tried and tried. So far, unsuccessfully, she reports. (Attn DMN Delivery Drivers: The house looks just like the one in the photo above.)

That’s one everyday revelation Mrs. Bush makes in her first-post-White House interview, one with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, taped during her trip to Houston.

Mrs. Bush is pleased to be settling into their home; they’ll split time between Dallas, where the presidential library will be built at her alma mater, Southern Methodist University, and their 1,500-acre ranch in Crawford. She’s working on her new book and catching up with friends.

But the former White House residents are still a little short on their own furniture. And they’ve had to make the usual new homeowner runs over to Elliott’s Hardware store on Maple Avenue for supplies like nightlights, flashlights, batteries and the No. 2 essential for all DIYers: WD-40.*

And when the Bushes had some friends over for dinner the other night, they had to borrow chairs from next door. (It was OK, though. Their next-door neighbors are the Secret Service, making Preston Hollow one of the city’s least likely places for break-ins.)

In fact, so suddenly and thoroughly has Mrs. Bush settled into her post-White House life back home in Texas that she missed President Obama’s speech to Congress the other night.

‘The next day I thought it was so ironic,’ Mrs. Bush told Karl, ‘that for eight years I would be a nervous wreck before the State of the Union, and for days before, as George would be preparing his speech, worried about it and thinking about what was going to be in the speech. And this time it came and went and I didn’t even think about it.’

Portions of the interview will air on ‘World News’ tonight and Friday’s ‘Good Morning America.’ What do you wanna bet the paper shows up by then.

(UPDATE 3 a.m. Pacific: Voila! In an article posted online last night the Dallas Morning News said it has been really delivering the Bushes’ copy every day, but must leave it with guards some distance from the residence. The impasse was cleared up after the ABC interview was taped, the newspaper said.)

--Andrew Malcolm

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*The No. 1 DIY essential is, of course, duct tape.