Bush Turns the Other Cheek
BARNES, FRED
Bush Turns the Other Cheek Alas. by Fred Barnes When President Bush, at the tail end of his Latin American trip last week, got around to commenting on the controversy over eight fired...
...But they would have known they were in for a fight if they tried to use the firings as a political weapon...
...Little good it did him...
...It probably wouldn’t have stopped Democrats in their tracks...
...The way Washington works in 2007, with Democrats in control of Congress, makes this necessary...
...This is the worst crisis of confidence at the Department of Justice that I have seen in my time in the Senate...
...From the earliest days of the Bush presidency, his advisers have debated whether he should be nice or tough...
...That’s what’s happened here...
...This led ultimately to the CIA leak case and the prosecution of Scooter Libby...
...He could begin by informing them that they won’t get the scalp of Gonzales, Rove, or anyone else...
...It’s never reciprocated...
...He pushed back furiously, thrilled his allies, and demoralized his enemies...
...He could battle noisily for confirmation of one or two or three appeals court nominees...
...that will never become law and concentrate on issues like immigration and education that may...
...It’s just Bush’s style...
...Bush has not given his allies anything or anyone to rally around...
...Being nice and conciliatory, as Bush has been, is counterproductive...
...By not instantly and unflinchingly denouncing the Democratic offensive for what it is, an entirely bogus attack on his administration, he has allowed a mere flap to get out of hand...
...Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Bush administration was guilty of “immoral” and “illegal” behavior...
...Following that, he could tell Democrats to quit wasting their time on antiwar resolutions and other issues (card check, stem cells, etc...
...Bush excels as leader of his country...
...Trouble will visit Bush again and again if he does not stand up to the Democrats...
...This tendency may have been unobjectionable when Republicans ran Congress, but it is something else today...
...This is not necessarily because he thinks politeness will curry favor with Democrats...
...Bush needs to fight back, rhetorically and otherwise, without hesitation and without fear that his critics will end up even more opposed to his policies...
...And if Reid and Schumer fume, so what...
...This is what’s known as a shot across the bow...
...Schumer may be a partisan hack, but as the Democratic point-man on the firings, he is carrying the day...
...attorneys, he was calm, reasonable, and even a bit apologetic...
...They want the president to speak kindly to Congress, the aide says, and try to mollify not only Democrats but also “the New York Times and [ABC anchor] George Stephanopoulos...
...He’s failing in both of these duties...
...The committee, knocked on its heels, never recovered...
...Something like this: “It’s an outrage that Democrats would attack, solely for political gain, a president’s constitutional authority to name U.S...
...And look what he’s enabled...
...Rather, it encourages his Democratic foes to be even more belligerent and discourages his Republican allies...
...Rather than apologize, as Bush has, North went after the real outrage: the congressional Irancontra committee itself...
...And now he faces unpleasant decisions over whether to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and permit Democrats to haul Karl Rove, his senior adviser, before a congressional committee...
...So there’s a crisis, but not the one Schumer talked about...
...Should he do either, his administration will be tremendously weakened and his presidency stained...
...This has prompted them to step up their demands for administration witnesses at congressional show trials and to begin turning policy differences into criminal violations...
...But he’s also responsible for leading—and defending—his administration and the Republican party...
...On one side are what an aide calls “the communicators...
...It’s small wonder, then, that Republicans have begun dropping off and calling for Gonzales’s ouster...
...by Fred Barnes When President Bush, at the tail end of his Latin American trip last week, got around to commenting on the controversy over eight fired U.S...
...President Clinton removed all 93 federal prosecutors in 1993, as was his right...
...He is unrelenting in pursuing the war on Islamic terrorists, and he performed admirably on his recent tour of Latin America...
...attorneys and remove them from office...
...That Democrats are now willing to play political games with our criminal justice system is a shame, and I will vigorously oppose their efforts...
...It is a crisis of confidence, a crisis of credibility, and a crisis of management...
...Republicans would be inspired...
...I have removed 8, none of them for political reasons...
...Another official says Bush “likes to set a tone,” a high one...
...Still another aide says Bush dislikes questioning an opponent’s motives...
...They’ve done this for raw political reasons: to mortify and cripple the president...
...The tough guys believe Bush should be as hard-hitting on Congress as he is when discussing the war on terror...
...What should Bush have said when Democrats first took after the firings...
...He guided Democrats as they transformed the perfectly legal and quite normal removal of federal prosecutors into a raging scandal...
...As best I can tell, counselor Dan Bartlett favors the gentler approach, Rove and Vice President Cheney the harder line...
...If you don’t come up very aggressively and push back, it takes on a life of its own,” says Republican senator John Thune of South Dakota...
...The model Bush should have followed from the get-go is that of Oliver North...
...It’s a crisis of presidential leadership...
...Now the Washington system works like this: A phony controversy that isn’t stamped out immediately and harshly can balloon into a real controversy or scandal...
...A White House official says the president’s instinct is not to denounce opponents...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly STandard...
...And Bush, with his timidity in the face of Democratic accusations, has let them...
...The next day, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York responded with some of his usual hyperbole...
...Administration officials would feel protected...
...The president’s failure to defend his administration has led to trouble before, notably when the White House declined to stand behind the “16 words” about Saddam Hussein’s search for uranium in Africa in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address...
...Instead, the Democrats’ attacks have gone virtually unanswered...
...He’s become an enabler...
...He hasn’t fought back...
...He could pardon Libby...
...The communicators are winning...
Vol. 12 • March 2007 • No. 27
