On shiny, brightly-colored objects

Okay, so I know this isn't even a subtopic of the article in question, but I read this bit:

Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., Bush's first budget director and now the GOP candidate for Indiana governor, remembered presenting Bush with a variety of spending choices, usually depicted with the elaborate charts and graphs the president seemed to like. (Emphasis mine)

and I just get this image of President Bush running a grape-jelly-stained index finger over a pie chart of federal social program spending and intoning, "Pretty... Pretty."