NP: shuffle play

The New York Times has a piece on President Obama looking to use the power of the executive branch to get things done this year, and in discussing the history of such efforts, this passage stood out:

Still, presidents have logged significant accomplishments through the stroke of a pen. In 1996, on his own authority, Mr. Clinton turned a 2,600-square-mile section of southern Utah into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in what was called at the time his boldest environmental move. Mr. Bush followed suit in 2006 by designating a 140,000-square-mile stretch of islands and ocean near Hawaii as the largest protected marine reserve in the world, in what some see as his most lasting environmental achievement.

Italics mine. I'm not sure if they're calling this particular move the best of a bunch of bad choices, or if this is designed to suppress laughter at the notion of George W. Bush having a "lasting environmental achievement," or what, but it sure seems like there's something loaded in that short phrase.