A Bush Do-Over Wish? Or Just Part of Legacy Building?
A lot has been said and written about the latest “exit” interview by President Bush with ABC’s Charles Gibson.
In her December 3 show, Rachel Maddow includes parts of this interview in a fascinating report on how Bush has assembled a team in the White House, including several former senior advisers such as Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, to “rewrite history” as part of the “Bush Legacy Project.”
As I said, the entire report is fascinating. But what especially caught my attention was Bush’s response to a question by Gibson on “do-overs.”
Bush’s response will probably be analyzed and critiqued over and over again, not only because of what he said (he passes the buck, blames others and other “things,” or, perhaps for the first time, admits an error, a failure, and–perhaps, perhaps–even accepts some responsibility); because of what he didn’t say (a lot!); but also because of the way in which he said it. His halting, bumbling, sighing, even somewhat sniffling performance could have been because he is unsure, because he truly has some regrets, because this is part of his “legacy building,” or perhaps he was just being his old self. You be the judge.
Below are Gibson’s question, and Bush’s response, as best as I could transcribe it, eh’s, ah’s, uh’s and all.
GIBSON: You’ve always said there’s no do-overs as President. If you had one?
BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and, said, you know, eh, hum, ah,you know, eh, ah, the weapons of mass destruction is [sic] a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just, eh, ah, people in my administration, and, eh, ah, you known (sigh) eh… And, ah, (sigh) you know, that’s not a do-over, but uh, I wou.., you know, I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.
Listen for yourself in the MSNBC video of The Rachel Maddow show, about 3:40 minutes into the video, and stay tuned for more Bush “do-overs.”
4 Responses to “A Bush Do-Over Wish? Or Just Part of Legacy Building?”
The do-over will only take effect when we're all long dead and gone- because no one that's living today will ever forget what really took place.
Notice that rather than reworking the legacy through good deeds like Carter, Clinton and even Daddy Bush, 43 chooses to use a PR team create his own reality and hope that it sticks with historians. He may realize now that he's made serious mistakes, but is taking the easy way out as he has all of his life.
I saw an interview with Rove where when asked about what went wrong, Turdblossom replied “Lets talk about what went right”- and went into the schpiel about how lucky Iraq is that we liberated them. Instead of the “Mission Accomplished” banner – Bush should stand under one that says “Freed 50 million”- and let historians figure it out.
kritt, you might want to wait until he actually isn't President anymore before making declarations about a lack of “good deeds.”
Here's another do-over we (or at least the rational amongst us) could dream of: the 2000 election. Only 47 more days of this complete moron. Today's great news: 533,000 jobs lost in November, but I am sure this was because of decisions made before Bush became President – please just go away and fast!
RevDave:
You are right on. For the past (almost) eight years, Conservatives have been blaming Clinton for every economical, financial, national security, etc., problem our nation has seen during the Bush regime. Today, Mr. Rush Limbaugh–you know that fuzzy little Goddddd's gift to humanity–blamed the November jobs loss, and in fact the Bush recession, on…..yes, you guessed it, Barack Obama's election.