Former first lady Laura Bush has lamented excessive partisanship and defended President Barack Obama in an interview with CNN that will probably cause her to be labeled a RINO who just doesn’t get in some parts of the talk radio political culture.
In fact, in the interview she shows that she not only does get it but is quite astute politically about the trending in Washington. She also provides an insight into one of the factors that perhaps caused her husband to adopt his own criticized political style.
Here are the relevant parts of the wide-ranging interview:
Former first lady Laura Bush praised the performance of her husband’s successor Monday, breaking with many Republicans in telling CNN that she thinks President Obama is doing a good job under tough circumstance.
She also criticized Washington’s sharp political divide during an interview covering a range of topics….
The typically reserved former first lady defended Obama’s decision to deliver a back-to-school speech to students, putting her at odds with many conservatives afraid that the president will use the opportunity to advance his political agenda.
“I think he is [doing a good job],” Bush said when asked to assess Obama’s job performance. “I think he has got a lot on his plate, and he has tackled a lot to start with, and that has probably made it more difficult.”
Michelle Obama is also “doing great,” she said, in part by turning the White House into a comfortable home for her family.
Bush didn’t completely dismiss the concerns of some conservatives but noted that controversial Education Department plans recommending that students draft letters discussing what they can do to help Obama had been changed.
“I think there is a place for the president … to talk to schoolchildren and encourage” them, she said. Parents should follow his example and “encourage their own children to stay in school and to study hard and to try to achieve the dream that they have.”
Bush indicated that she didn’t think it was fair for Obama to be labeled a “socialist” by critics and expressed her disappointment with the intensely polarized nature of contemporary American politics.
But it’s clear she has been thinking about the “why” of this:
Part of the reason for the polarization, she said, was the increase in the number of congressional districts dominated by either strongly conservative or liberal voters.
“We’ve seen that for the last eight years, certainly, and we’re still seeing it,” she said. “That’s just a fact of life.”
Bush conceded that after her husband was elected president, he was unable to replicate his success as governor of Texas in reaching across the aisle to Democrats.
“He was disappointed that that was not the way it worked out in Washington,” she said. “I’m sure President Obama didn’t expect it to be that way [either]. … All of us need to do what we can to come together on issues.”
What? Respecting and working with “the enemy?” (Time for Rush and Glenn to diss the Bushes as not being real Republicans..)
PERSONAL NOTE: I can attest to what she said about Bush in Texas. When Bush was governor I did many shows in Texas, once spending nearly 6 weeks in that wonderful state. Republicans and Democrats (and I met several Democrats who were extensively involved in state politics or had spouses deeply involved in it) praised GWB for his ability to talk to both sides and affability. One Democrat sadly noted:”The Governor has done some things right but the downside is that his being in office has led to so many Democrats being replaced by conservative Republicans in elections and by appointment.” Bush was considered a skilled politician who was well-liked and had expanded his party’s brand name due to the way he operated and the way Democrats responded to his overtures and olive branches.
Among other things in the interview, Laura Bush defended her husband’s record on foreign affairs and said former Vice President Dick Cheney has a right to speak out and defend the previous administration, and that his defense is appreciated.
What is the larger significance of her comments? Two things:
Additionally, it can be argued that there has long been an unspoken consensus on how American politics operates, with boundaries on what is sheer partisanship and what pushes the envelope. In the case of the school furor, the envelope was pushed off the table — and you can still read and hear all kinds of rationalizations now about what it was “really” about when the frenzy reached its peak. But, like Laura Bush, a large chunk of Americans — including thoughtful Republicans who may be centrists, progressives or conservatives — can’t have their memories reprogrammed by the revised or finessed assertions of a writer or a broadcaster now that the text of a speech praised by Newt Gingrich and Joe Scarborough has come out.
Laura Bush’s interview is important because it underscores again how political parties and liberals and conservatives may passionately disagree and argue about the role of each party in creating the foreign policy and financial in which the United States is now mired.
But there is a zone where partisanship goes beyond partisanship into something uglier that can backfire on those who indulge in it — and Laura Bush’s comments helped define it again.
Hopefully, Laura Bush is for the verbal hits she’s likely to receive since he or she who disagrees must be discredited, demonized or defined in the eyes of some.
Hopefully the “some” is fewer than the total.
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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.