Strictly Speaking
“George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush are two pretty remarkable men,” says Karl Rove. “And I’ve learned a lot from them, learned a lot about life, learned a lot about character, learned a lot about loyalty and trust and honesty and straightforwardness.”
To be fair to those in the blogosphere jumping all over this, it’s true, strictly speaking, that the GOPresident is remarkable. And in the above, Rove doesn’t claim that he learned to be loyal, trustworthy, honest, and straightforward from the GOPresident. Only that he learned about these things from the GOPresident.
One can, of course, learn about loyalty, trust, honesty, and straightforwardness from someone who in fact does not at all exhibit such qualities, or even anything remotely resembling them.