Appearing on Larry King Live, Laura Bush let it be known she was a little unhappy with that uppity black guy who showed so little respect to her husband during the presidential campaign.
…Laura Bush said she took some of Obama’s critiques of her husband personally.
“Were you angry at it?” King asked.
“Yes, sort of. George didn’t really even know about it because he didn’t really watch it that much,” Laura Bush said, laughing.
“So what’s new?” Bush piped in. “When you make big decisions and tough calls, you’re going to get criticized.”
“During the course of this presidency, I’ve been disappointed at times by the silly name-calling that goes on in Washington — it’s really not necessary,” Bush said. “I’ve done my best, though, to make sure I didn’t bring the presidency down to that level.”
Well, isn’t that nice? George W. Peckerhead Bush is above all that partisan name-calling because, you know, it’s just not necessary. And he’d never do any of that stuff.
Yeah. Let’s review.
President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq — a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.
Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry’s statements about Iraq “can embolden an enemy.” After Kerry criticized Allawi’s speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him “destructive” to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.
It was the latest instance in which prominent Republicans have said that Democrats are helping the enemy or that al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents and other enemies of the United States are backing Kerry and the Democrats. Such accusations are not new to American politics, but the GOP’s line of attack this year has been pervasive and high-level.
• On Tuesday, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said terrorists “are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry.” On Fox News, Hatch said Democrats are “consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there…”
• On Saturday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) said at a GOP fundraiser: “I don’t have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think they would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops.” Asked whether he believed al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency, Hastert said: “That’s my opinion, yes.”
• The previous day in Warsaw, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said terrorists in Iraq “are trying to influence the election against President Bush.”
…Earlier this month, Cheney provoked an uproar when he said that on Election Day, “if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating” and that the United States would not respond vigorously. Cheney later said that he was not suggesting the country would be attacked if Kerry were elected. But a few days later, he said: “We’ve gone on the offense in the war on terror — and the president’s opponent, Senator Kerry, doesn’t seem to approve.”
The White House and the Bush campaign said they would neither endorse nor disavow the remarks by Hastert, Armitage and others. “Those statements speak to the great concern many people have about John Kerry’s consistent vacillation under political pressure on the most significant issues the nation faces with regard to the war on terror,” Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.*
White House press secretary Scott McClellan had no quarrel with the remarks. “They are expressing their opinion,” he said…
Such charges surfaced soon after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Late that year, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said tactics used by critics of the USA Patriot Act “only aid terrorists” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies.” In 2002, Bush charged that opponents of his version of homeland security legislation are “not interested in the security of the American people.” In 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that if terrorists think Bush’s opponents might prevail, “they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement.”
This year, the accusations began at lower levels. In March, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told a group of Republicans: “If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election.”
And yet Bush sits there with a straight face, remembering how he was above it all.
Maybe he really does remember it that way. The problem with Bush was always his complete inability toward self-reflection or taking backward glances. This is the man, after all, who couldn’t name a single mistake he made during the first four years of his presidency.
And that, folks, is why we’re all focused on the future. Because whatever else it brings, it will have a whole lot less George W. Bush in it.
*Yes, that Steve Schmidt. The one who managed McCain’s campaign at the end, after McCain sold his soul to win.
Bush and Dick, listen up, “Go away, stay away.”