negation again, and coordination too

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

i caught this in radio replays of pieces of GWB's acceptance speech
last night, and then verified it in the text published in today's NYT
(p. P4):

(1) ...a decision no president would ask for, but must be prepared to
make.

the negation in "no president" does *not* distribute across the
conjuncts; the intended meaning was not 'a decision no president would
ask for, but no president must be prepared to make'.  instead, it's 'a
decision no president would ask for, but any president must be prepared
to make'.  if you can get "a decision any president wouldn't ask for"
(shades of our july discussion under the heading "failures of
parallelism"!), then it could have been framed in fully parallel
fashion, as:

(2) ...a decision any president wouldn't ask for, but must be prepared
to make.

now, (2) is borderline for me (though it's fine, i realize, for many
speakers).  and (1) was just edgy enough for me that i noticed it while
listening, none too attentively, to the radio.  my impression is that
"any...not" speakers find this alternative ("any president wouldn't ask
for this decision") somewhat less bold than plain ol' negated subjects
("no president would ask for this decision"), which would account for
the formulation of the first conjunct in (1); then, having made that
stylistic decision, the speechwriters went on to the formulation of the
second conunct, as a full clause or just a VP.  they could have chosen

(3) ...a decision no president would ask for, but any president must be
prepared to make.

(that would have been my choice), but (3) is longer than the
alternatives, and the repeated "president" puts a lot of weight on the
presidency, when the speechwriters probably wanted to keep the decision
in the foreground, so they went for (1).

but how do others judge (1)?  especially with respect to (2).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)