Last April, President Bush’s iPod lineup was revealed to the world to contain some rather incongruous choices – from “My Sharona” by the Knack to a few Joni Mitchell songs. The world shrugged. But apparently what the leader of the free world is listening to is still a burning question, and so the Post’s Reliable Source today reports that Bush’s iPod Shuffle is now filled with some different tunes – everything from “American Pie” by Don Mclean to some Dwight Yoakam.

This got us thinking. Surely we’d be providing a valuable service to the United States and the world if we could keep the president happy by filling his iPod with songs that would his expand his musical knowledge and keep him energized enough to, you know, run the country. Maybe some Big and Rich? “A Little Less Conversation,” by Elvis? For help, we turned to our latest obsesssion, pandora.com. It’s a music database for which when an artist or song is typed in, a playlist of other similiar acts based on specific traits of whatever you typed in is created. We created a playlist for “American Pie” and added Dwight Yoakam to the mix to see what it would come up with. The answer? A lot of Son Volt, a song called “Triple Crown” by Kevin Fowler, which includes the lyrics “So bartender set me up with the triple crown/Double ain’t enough when I’m feelin’ this down” – maybe not the best for a recovering alcoholic. “Don’t Misunderstand Me” by John Mellencamp is the latest to hit our speakers.

What do you think? If you were in charge of downloading music to the president’s iPod – as somebody on his staff, in fact, is – what would you load on there to motivate him? What might other administration officials listen to? We hear there’s a song out there called “Secret Agent Plame” that might be right up Karl Rove’s alley…