Doonesbury appears to have, at least temporarily, finished with the story arc of young Dana Perino, the White House press secretary struggling to find the voice of Bush. In the last frame, speaking about not caring what Al Gore wears to the awards ceremonies for the Nobel prize because this president isn’t into “the awards scene,” she appears to have found something of the essence of Bush.

Well, what plays for the comics also plays in real life. At an October 24th press briefing, Perino was asked to respond to her statement that there are health benefits to climate change.

MS. PERINO: Sure. In some cases, there are—look, this is an issue where I’m sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals. There are also concerns that it would increase tropical diseases and that’s—again, I’m not an expert in that, I’m going to let Julie Gerberding testify in regards to that, but there are many studies about this that you can look into.

Not since Reagan explained that trees cause more pollution than automobiles have we had so impressive a use of the power of spin. It merely remains to be seen if the public rolls over for this one or if we stand up and say “Oh, puh-lease” or something perhaps more politically challenging.