November 28, 2003
THAT ONE WON'T PLAY (via Mike Daley):
Some Understand Covert Journey; Others Fear Bad Precedent (Howard Kurtz, November 28, 2003
Washington Post)
Former White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, who worked for President Bill Clinton, said: "There's no way to do this kind of trip if it's broadcast in advance, for security reasons. My problem with this is not that he misled the press. This is a president who has been unwilling to provide his presence to the families who have suffered but thinks nothing of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop."
Last week, Democrats complained that he didn't care about the military, because he wasn't going to every funeral. Now he visits them in a war zone and they're just "props"? They need some work on their talking points.
UPDATE: Oops, may have spoken to soon--apparently the Europeans and Arabs agree with Mr. Lockhart, Bush's Iraq Visit a Pre-Election PR Stunt (November 28, 2003, Agence France-Presse)
"Electoral raid on Baghdad" read the caustic headline in the left-wing Paris daily Liberation which summed up European newspaper editorial reaction to President George W Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit to US troops in Iraq. [...]Posted by Orrin Judd at November 28, 2003 10:37 AM"Bush 'infiltrated' Baghdad for two hours," scoffed the front-page headline of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat.
In Beirut, Al-Mustaqbal newspaper, owned by Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, announced that "Bush's secret visit to Baghdad opens presidential election season."
A front-page editorial in Lebanon's leading An-Nahar newspaper compared Bush to Roman emperor Julius Caesar, but said the US president could not repeat the phrase: "I came, I saw, I conquered."
The headline should be, "...Others fear 'Bad Precedent' is the only lame-o argument they'll be able to try on."
Posted by: Brian Jones at November 28, 2003 12:54 PMLooks like some Dems are trying out one of the slogans ANSWER used earlier this year-- "We support the troops after they're dead". (Although I think the ANSWER sign used "their" as the obligatory mis-spelling.)
For one thing, they need to understand the difference between commander-in-chief and mourner-in-chief. Everyone knows the latter is the Vice Presidents's job.
If that's the best they can come up with, then they must know they are in trouble.
For nitwit remark of the week, you won't find better than NPR's repeated assertion that Bush's political advisers decided he "had to go" because Jack Straw went.
More interesting to me, though, is the skulking nature of the trip. We've come a long way, baby, from 1911 when King Edward VII could ride through a crowd of millions in an open carriage.
Of course, in those days, kings and presidents and prime ministers got assassinated pretty often. We (meaning, roughly, civilized people) have become less accepting of that over the past three generations.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 28, 2003 1:08 PMThe jealousy is palpable - the envy is green - and the overall stupidity is just amazing.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 28, 2003 3:35 PMMaybe the know-it-all political "expert" Lockhart should ask the troops themselves - hahahaha, good one, I know, like that would ever happen - if they felt like "props" before offering his "expert" analysis of something he, quite obviously, could never understand.
I'm guessing most of them had tears welling up and apples in their throats, or were so excited they could hardly stand still. Wouldn't any of us, in their shoes? Is this really so hard to understand?
It takes a special kind of cynical moron to not see the personal touch this whole episode carried, for those troops, their familes and friends, and by extension, all Americans.
Noted! Thanks for playing Joe!