Every year, some respectable friends of mine throw a lavish Christmas party in suburban Boston. One of the highlights is the annual Yankee Swap, where inappropriate gag gifts wind up in the hands of those who covet them least. My take this year was a calendar of quotes from the President, which seems to have been a big seller over the holidays.

The calendar, billed as "the very curious language of George W. Bush," is supposed to help the owner feel smug and superior while reading verbal gaffes from a guy who admittedly is not a very good public speaker. Curiously, however, the quotes they've chosen almost always make me more sympathetic towards the guy. For example, here is today's entry:

"We ought to make the pie higher."

The calendar's creators apparently want us all to think the following: "Higher? He should have said bigger! Ha ha! What a dumb monkey the President is!"

Well guess what, cheese: higher is bigger. Ever been to Pizzeria Uno? They don't increase the diameter of their pizza pie to make it bigger — they make it a deeper and therefore higher pie. A higher Yao Ming is a bigger basketball player than Allen Iverson. A higher Sears Tower is a bigger building than a one-story schoolhouse. And a higher Bill Clinton is....oh, I'm sorry, he never inhaled, right?

So if the President wants to make a higher pie, resulting in everyone's individual piece being higher as well, he's more than welcome to do it. Just don't change the recipe to require a few more tablespoons of my tax dollars.