Gee, one big happy in the Beltway, isn't it? Portland Examiner:
President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.
And she'd listen why, exactly?
In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit [on a throne?], things could change dramatically.’ ”
The mind reels. But it gets better:
Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.
“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”
As an example, Bush cited his detainee program, which allows him to keep enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay while they await adjudication. Bush is unmoved by endless criticism of the program because he says his successor will need it.
“I specifically talked about it so that a candidate and/or president wouldn’t have to deal with the issue,” he said. “The next person has got the opportunity to analyze the utility of the program and make his or her decision about whether or not it is necessary to protect the homeland. I suspect they’ll find that it is necessary. But my only point to you is that it was important for me to lay it out there, so that the politics wouldn’t enter into whether or not the program ought to survive beyond my period.”
The Examiner asked Bush why Democratic candidates such as Clinton and Barack Obama, who routinely lambaste his handling of Iraq, should take his advice.
“First of all, I expect them to criticize me. That’s one way you get elected in the Democratic primary, is to criticize the president,” Bush replied. “I don’t expect them to necessarily take advice from me. I would expect their insiders to at least get a perspective about how we see things.”
Indeed.
Hillary! The candidate only the Beltway could love!
NOTE Via Kevin. The book: The Evangelical President.
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the question is
...whether Hillary or anyone else in the Oval Office would survive very long if they didn't "effectively prosecute the war" they way the "insiders...see things".
Evidence suggests at least one President, and his brother, didn't.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
This "Bush Advising Hillery" story reeks
of disinformation. Intended, I suspect, to provoke exactly the response seen here, i.e. "EWWWW!!"
The byline on this "news story" is Bill Sammon, coincidentally the author of a new book on "Bush the Evangelical" or somesuch. Some of
Sammon's other recent "stories" include:
Democrats Tack Left While Republicans Stay Center,
Hillary Clinton Won't Repudiate MoveOn.Org's "Betray Us" Ad and
Democrats Soften Criticism of Troop Surge in Iraq.
IIRC these "Examiner" papers (this one is Nashville btw, not Portland--although I think much of the content is the same boilerplate in all of them) are a very recent startup, the details of which I forget but were Not Good. It's been done very quietly too, last time I checked they were only in east coast cities.
Anyway, I would not go overboard on Hillary bashing based on anything this Sammons person says. Just sayin'.
Legacy of Failure and Stank
Bush is terrifed that his lovely legacy will crumble the moment he is out of office, that we will all come to our senses and that reason will reign again, we will look back and go "gross! what a stupid ugly fool we tolerated" and he will lose that Good Ole "Greatness" feeling he had for a little while, bombing Afghanistan, that feeling he carried with him, or tries to, that feeling he had back in the ole 90% approval rating days, that deep-in-the-bubble sniffing-your-own-farts delusional cloud he tries so desperately to maintain.
Basically, it feels to me like the old trick of getting those you aren't sure about dirty with you so that they can't turn on you later.
And i DO think we can count on Hillary being very hawkish. There is no hope she will do anything but keep up the occupation, dont doubt it for a sec.
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