Tony Snow on Bush: "An Embarrassment" and "Impotent"
The folks over at Think Progress have compiled a list of Snow's quotes about Bushie:
Tony Snow On President Bush: ‘An Embarrassment,’ ‘Impotent,’ ‘Doesn’t Seem To Mean What He Says’
Comment(s) »
» Leave a comment
- Your E-mail address is never displayed. If you enter it, it will only be visible to the blog author
- The line and paragraph breaks automatically
One of the oddest responses to the Snow appointment comes from the Center for American Progress, Clintonite John Podesta's think tank. The center's ThinkProgress.org site has a chronicle of Snow quotes critical of George W. Bush. It's not a terribly impressive list: Of 14 quotes, five are from before Bush even became president. Others are taken out of context, for example:
"George Bush has become something of an embarrassment." [11/11/05]
The quote comes from a column on the Virginia governor's election, in which Democrat Tim Kaine beat Republican Jerry Kilgore. Here it is in context:
And don't forget about the Swagger Factor: A party that projects confidence and good cheer will thrash a Chicken Little party any day. Kilgore looked scared. Kaine acted like the cool kid on prom night.
The Swagger Factor has national repercussions because George W. Bush has lost his. His wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson. The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment. At the nadir of his campaign, Jerry Kilgore actively dodged having to share a stage with the commander in chief.
Two quotes (shown in boldface below) come from this March 17, 2006, column:
American conservatives have discovered the will-and-morale-sapping properties of political power. A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.
George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion. The president has taken lately to crowing that the Medicare prescription drug benefit will cover 95 percent of all drug expenditures for some of the nation's old and poor, and is telling younger Americans they have a duty to enroll their parents in the new regime of socialized pharmaceuticals.
These are fairly common criticisms on the right, and many of the president's admirers would agree with them. In his role as a pundit--a role he obviously must relinquish until his current assignment ends--Snow has been a thoughtful, friendly critic of the president. It's not as if Bush has hired Helen Thomas, Andrew Sullivan or that crazy former Enron adviser.
Snow's appointment suggests that President Bush is not afraid of constructive criticism. Perhaps he has begun taking to heart Peggy Noonan's advice:
In the end it doesn't matter if White House staffers suddenly listen to critics, to non-pre-vetted policy intellectuals, to questioners, complainers, whiners, Wise Men, if you can find them, and people who actually have something to say. But it does matter if George Bush does.
It matters that he becomes his broadest self and comes to tolerate dissent, argument, ambiguity. That actually would be daring. It would mark not the appearance of change but change, not the appearance of progress but the thing itself.
Somehow we don't think the ThinkProgress guys meant to make a pro-Bush argument when they rehearsed the critical Snow quotes. What point exactly they were trying to make is beyond us.
Comment by — 2006/04/26 @ 02:44 PM — (Reply)