You’d think some folks were in need of political deodorant due to the quick distance they’re putting between others — and themselves.
Specifically, President George Bush who slowly but surely put himself a few Texas two-steps away from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay — as DeLay put himself a few Texas two-steps away from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. To wit:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) apologized yesterday for heated comments he made about possible retribution against federal judges for their handling of the Terri Schiavo case, but declined to say whether he favors impeaching those judges.
But he wasn’t the only one talking.
DeLay backtracked as White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush considers the Texas Republican, who is battling ethics allegations, a friend, but suggested that the majority leader is more of a business associate than a social pal.“I think there are different levels of friendship with anybody,” McClellan said.
In other words: he’s a dude but not a bud… And:
At a crowded news conference in his Capitol office, DeLay addressed remarks he made in the hours after the brain-damaged Florida woman died on March 31. “I said something in an inartful way and I shouldn’t have said it that way and I apologize for saying it that way,” DeLay told reporters.
Apologies go a long way in American politics. It shows a political maturity and usually the public lets the official regroup on THAT SPECIFIC mistake. So this will likely let a bit of air out of the political crisis blimp inflated due to his comments — but not the scandals swirling around him. And if his apology partially deflated that blimp, Delay quickly seemingly worked extremely hard to feverishly pump some more controversy air into it, to ensure it wasn’t deflated:
DeLay seemed at pains to soften, if slightly, his rhetoric of March 31, when Schiavo died despite an extraordinary political and legal effort to save her life.
“I believe in an independent judiciary. I repeat, of course I believe in an independent judiciary,” DeLay said.
At the same time, he added, the Constitution gives Congress power to oversee the courts.
“We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse,” DeLay said.
Asked whether he favors impeachment for any of the judges in the Schiavo case, he did not answer directly.
So there you have it: he apparently went to the same school and classroom as that noted legal and constitutional scholar Phyllis Schlafley did where they apparently learned that throughout our history Congress has been totally out to lunch in treating the courts as a separate branch and that judges must receive order sheets and rubber stamp decisions the way Phyllis and Tom want — or be fired.
Now, schools do differ in their curriculums.
But at TMV’s school and university, Tom and Phyllis would have been wearing dunce caps.
UPDATE: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently offered some advice to DeLay:
In an exclusive interview with CBS News Correspondent Gloria Borger, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said it’s time for DeLay to stop blaming a left-wing conspiracy for his ethics controversy and to lay out his case for the American people to judge.
“I don’t want to prejudge him and my hope is that Tom will be able to prove his case,” said Gingrich, who engineered the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. “But I think the burden is on him to prove it at this point.”
Is he doing that? “I don’t know yet. I think the jury’s out,” said Gingrich.
“DeLay’s problem isn’t with the Democrats; DeLay’s problem is with the country,” Gingrich continued. “And so DeLay has a challenge: to lay out a case that the country comes to believe, that the country decides is legitimate. If he does that he’e fine.”
UPDATE II: The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz gives the definitive answer to whether the news media is out to “get” DeLay:
I’d suggest that DeLay is simply a big fat target for investigative reporters because he lives close to the edge (if the three House ethics panel admonishments are any indication). In fact, when another Texas congressman was in a House leadership position–a congressman who happened to be a Democrat–he also got pummeled by the press.
I speak, of course, of Jim Wright, who resigned as House speaker in 1989 after nearly two years of negative press (fueled in part by Newt Gingrich, who pursued the kind of partisan jihad against Wright that Republicans are now complaining about when their guy is the pinata).
And he gives readers specific facts on the Wright story to DOCUMENT exactly how the Post covered that.
Even so, the press is increasingly becoming an easy hot button issue for some. Facts such as the ones Kurtz painstakingly lays out in his MUST READ PIECE won’t be mentioned by those who insist the press is out to get DeLay just because he’s a conservative.
Indeed: you also won’t hear those folks quoting Newt Gingrich, who we cited above, either. (Kurtz also has a quote from the CBS interview).
But if you WANT the facts on how the media has treated DeLay…read what Kurtz came up with.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.