Le Canard Maladroit

The Confidence Man reads yet another of Bush Pere leak-magnet Tom DeFrank's pieces on the spider-monkey-infested raft that is the Bush II White House:

http://www.nydailynews.com/10-28-2005/news/story/359941p-306654c.html

'"He's not a lame duck," one of [Bush's] closest political counselors said yesterday. "He's a clumsy duck. This can still be fixed."'

A "clumsy duck" -- what an evocative, yet metonymically clumsy *itself*, locution.

The Confidence Man is certain it scans much better en Francais: "le canard maladroit."

Note, of course, the alternative reading of the French phrase: the malevolently false and misleading story ("le canard mal") from the Right ("a droit").

Ding ding ding ding! We have a winnah!