Bush’s Comments Made Abroad About Obama: A New Low Amid Low Politics

When President George Bush made comments in Israel accusing Democratic Senator Barack Obama of wanting to appease terrorism, it raised several issues.

First, he didn’t actually name Obama so the White House could say it was all in Mr. Obama’s mind. This is the pols’ timeless technique of “plausible deniability” — although in this case only a jar of sauerkraut sitting on the shelf at Stop & Shop in New Haven, Connecticut would think Bush is actually being misunderstood.

The problem: Bush had made comments on Tuesday similar but not quite as blunt as the ones he chose to make on foreign soil. Read our earlier post to recap and be sure to see the update with the link to his earlier comments (and from Senator Joe Lieberman saying Bush got it exactly right).

Secondly, over the years when Democrats made sharply partisan comments from foreign soil blasting the U.S. Republicans, many independents, and some Democrats angrily denounced them. Using foreign soil to blast your own country or candidates is considered one of the lowest forms of politics. But without reading blog commentary or watching and listening to Republican commentators this independent voter (who voted for Ronald Reagan) knows what the argument most likely is in most quarters: strip it away and it’s “It’s OK if Bush does it” (because he has an “R” in front of his name) but if Obama did it he would be lambasted.

But the Philadelphia Daily News’ Will Bunch says it better than I can because I’m still absorbing the spectacle of someone who is supposed to represent ALL OF US including Democrats and independents having in the space of one week TWICE equated Democrats and now Obama (nameless but read our previous post) with appeasement and suggesting that unless you vote for his party you may die in a terrorist attack.

So here are generous portions from Bunch’s post with some comments:

I’ve seen a lot of sad things in American politics in my lifetime — the resignation of a president who became a national disgrace after he oversaw a campaign of break-ins and cover-ups, another who circumvented the Constitution to trade arms for hostages, and yet is now hailed as national hero. And those paled to what we have seen in the last seven years — flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a “pre-emptive” war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.

But now it’s come to this: A new low that I never imagined was even possible.

President Bush went on foreign soil today, and committed what I consider an act of political treason: Comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany — in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust. Bush’s bizarre and beyond-appropriate detour into American presidential politics took place in the middle of what should have been an occasion for joy: A speech to Israeli’s Knesset to honor that nation’s 60th birthday.

I’ve said it before on TMV: George Bush has governed as if he is President of the Base instead of President of the United States and ALL Americans. He has worked hard to attain his record-breaking low approval ratings but it’s clear he feels he has more work to do before he leaves office. More Bunch:

As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.

Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that’s why we’re having an election here at home, to sort these issues out — hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals. Not only is the president’s comment a gross misrepresentation of Barack Obama’s stance on the issue, but ironically, it comes just a day after his own Secretary of State, Robert Gates, said of Iran: “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them.” Is Gates a Nazi appeaser-type, too? And Bush has been hardly consistent on this point, either. Look at his own dealings with oil-rich Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, linked to deadly terror attacks like Pan Am Flight 103.

But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate, When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.

It is a mindset – part of what I call the “talk radio political culture” of 21st century America. It’s the mindset of divide and rule — that keeping your party in power means its OK to use exaggerations, press hot buttons so you are supported not due to the quality of your ideas, policies and how you argue them, but by making Americans hate or fear other Americans.

Just as FDR and Eisenhower will be remembered for having brought people together, and Ronald Reagan managed to disarm critics with his charm and considerable wit, Bush will be remembered for what in the 1960s they called “gut politics” and in essence adapting a form of McCarthyism to 21st century issues. Instead of being soft on communism, it’s now soft on terrorism.

It WORKS. But it eschews genuine thoughtful dialogue in favor of misrepresentation, exaggeration and inaccurate definition. MORE:

We are Americans.

And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove-and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that have lost all perspective — and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason.

Bunch ends with this:

Today, it’s a whole new ballgame. I believe this treacherous statement by a U.S. president in Israel is a signal to the Democrats in the House in Washington, that it’s time to play its Constitutional role in ending this trauma, before even greater acts against the interest of America are wrongly committed in our name.

It’ll never happen, won’t come to that and it would be a huge mistake on the part of the Democats if they did just that (which they won’t).

Elections are on the horizon. Democrats would find themselves playing defensive action as the GOP message machine (talk radio, cable shows, new and old media pundits) would portray Bush as the victim. It could actually boomerang and rally the GOP base. Remember the Bill Clinton impeachment?

What is certain is that there will be a segment of Americans who will feel that those who support and defend this kind of political statement don’t deserve their support as individuals and as a party. This independent voter votes by mail. And Mr. Bush is making my decision very easy for me.

P.S. It’s now a cliche of blogging that if you dare take a strong stand on an issue you can’t be a moderate, independent or centrist, a contention not shown in polls or in American history read this book written by former Bill Clinton/Rudy Guiliani aide, centrist John Avlon.).

In fact, it isn’t being moderate if you enable or remain silent when a whole party and a candidate is demonized…twice in one week. Bush is making the best argument now for independent voters to vote a protest vote.

This isn’t a matter of being pro-Obama, or pro-McCain or pro-Clinton or pro-Barr. It’s a matter of being an American who respects the other views of other Americans and wants to see them portrayed accurately — particularly by elected officials who ought to know better.

And who already do.

Many. Of. Us. Have. Had. Enough. Of. This.

To read considerable blog commentary on this issue, go HERE.