Was President George Bush poised to meet with grieving mother and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan but talked out of it by his political advisors?
The Dilby News Monitor, citing what it calls a “confirmed tip” from a “White House insider” reports that GWB was ready to see Sheehan and possibly score some political points — but his advisors had other (political) ideas:
Sources close to The Dilby News Monitor tell Dilby, the day before Cindy Sheehan left to attend to her mother, President Bush wanted to meet with her and create a media blitz. Bush had seen the public outcry and he almost gave in to the anti-war activist, but his closest advisors decided it would be best for Bush not to meet with the grieving mother because the far-left would use meeting against Republicans in upcoming elections. In addition, Michael Moore was to use the footage of the meeting between Bush and Sheehan to revive his agenda in order to help boost Democratic votes in the 2008 Presidential Election. Moore has had embedded cameras and/or correspondents just in case Sheehan met with President Bush.
This actually makes the MOST SENSE than anything we’ve heard so far.
We’ve noted here how bungled this whole event has been with the White House seemingly out of sync and caught flat-footed in how to respond to it – other than the usual best-offense-is-a-good-offense via surrogates. As we have written several times, there were more politically adept ways of defusing this crisis.
If Dilby’s source is correct, Bush was following his political instincts which told him he could meet with her early on and it might be to his benefit. His advisors, on the other hand, took what they apparently felt (if this report is correct) to be a longer view of the political impact — the impact it might have on consolidating the GOP majority.
Of course what has happened is that Sheehan has so far gotten a ton of free press publicity and largely but not exclusively sympathetic coverage. The White House hasn’t gained by letting the Sheehan vigil continue and the story fester. And, a not unimportant consequence, Sheehan being out there has led to her becoming a catalyst for a greater organization of anti-war forces throughout the country.
A NOTE ON DILBY: We’ve featured it in both our Take A Peek and as an alternative to the Drudge Report. It is crammed with all kinds of useful links — and not just news links. It’s constantly updated and Dilby has occasionally been at the forefront of key stories swirling around the Internet. Highly recommended.
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.