The controversy continues to grow over President George Bush’s push for legislation that narrowly defines the Geneva Convention — a move that is being opposed by some in the military and some key GOPers (most interestingly, high profile Republicans who served in the military).
His press conference yesterday has brought a ton of comment by pundits and bloggers. Some said the President was forceful. Others said he seemed to lose it. Some said he seemed frantic. Some focus on part of a phrase where he said you can’t “think” such and such. Yet others suggest Bush was essentially blackmailing the country and the Congress by threatening that if he doesn’t get a law the way he wants to, interrogations will be halted. Yet others said the GOPers who are resisting Bush will in the end go along with him and the U.S. constitutional goal post will be again moved without a substantive fight from where it was before the Bush administration came into office.
Watch Keith Olbermann’s Countdown piece from You Tube below — and make your own decision.
OUR TAKE: Towards the end Bush seems angry that a decision he has taken is not being accepted and that the press and others are daring to question him. As someone who watched Richard Nixon’s press conferences during the height of that administrations’ crises, there is a sense of deja vu. Bush here seems to be first explaining what he argues is a vital legal need and then seems to be switching into a lashing out and nearly a threatening mode (the way he keeps repeating that interrogations will stop).
Our democracy has always operated on advise and consent — not just a President’s presentation and ratification after perfunctory questions. In this case, Bush is now facing some strong GOP opposition, but it’ll be interesting to see if cynical predictions that it’ll all vanish within a few days come true. If that happens without some kind of White House compromise, the interpretation could be made that at least some of the opposition was political posturing.
Note, too, law professor Jonathan Turley’s take on it in this segment: Turley was a favorite of Republicans when he blasted Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky and impeachment era. Now he’s not the favorite of some GOPers anymore.
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.