“What is it about August?”
— Former President George H.W. Bush, quoted by the Associated Press.
“What is it about August?”
— Former President George H.W. Bush, quoted by the Associated Press.
“We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority. President Obama has the authority.”
— Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), quoted by BuzzFeed, apparently forgetting that she co-sponsored legislation to impeach President George W. Bush over the Iraq war.
Former President George W. Bush has been working on a “highly personal project since leaving the White House: He has quietly completed a biography of his father, former President George H.W. Bush,” the AP reports.
The book will be released on November 11.
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A new Quinnipiac poll finds that 58% of Americans believe President Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 was the right thing to do.
In contrast, 61% said that George W. Bush’s decision to invade in 2003 was the wrong thing to do and 51% of voters blame Bush for the current problems in Iraq.
Republican National Committee: “In honor of President George W. Bush’s birthday, we’re offering a blue, special-edition ‘I Miss W.’ t-shirt.”
“He’s like the A-Rod of politics.”
— David Plouffe, quoted by the New York Times, on former Vice President Dick Cheney.
“If they hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, none of this would be happening. Mr. Cheney has been incredibly adroit for the last six years or so attacking the administration for not doing an adequate job of cleaning up the mess that he made. And I think it’s unseemly. And I give President Bush, by the way, a lot of credit for trying to stay out of this debate and letting other people work through it.”
— Bill Clinton, in an interview with NBC News.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney blasted President Obama as a weak president after a foreign policy speech that was an implicit rebuke of the Bush administration, The Hill reports.
Said Cheney: “He is a very, very weak president. Maybe the weakest — certainly in my lifetime.”
“If he doesn’t think that was torture, I would invite him anywhere in the United States to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through, one of them 100-plus-odd times.”
— Sen. Angus King (I-ME), in an interview on MSNBC, on Vice President Cheney defending the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA under the Bush administration.
“If I would have to do it all over again, I would. The results speak for themselves.”
— Dick Cheney, quoted by Huffington Post, on the Bush administration’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding.
NBC News: “As Republicans complain about the Obama administration’s latest deadline extension for Americans to purchase health insurance, Democrats are countering with this reminder: The Bush administration did something similar in 2006.”
“Back then, as it was implementing the Medicare prescription-drug benefit Bush had signed into law, the GOP presidential administration announced it was waiving penalties for low-income seniors and those with disabilities who signed up late.”
Kevin Drum: “You’ve probably seen this before from other sources, but the chart… basically shows that for the past 40 years voting patterns haven’t differed much by age. In fact, there’s virtually no difference between generations at all until you get to the George Bush era. At that point, young voters suddenly leave the Republican Party en masse. Millennials may be far less likely than older generations to say there’s a big difference between Republicans and Democrats, but their actual voting record belies that.”
“Whatever it was that Karl Rove and George Bush did–and there are plenty of possibilities, ranging from Iraq to gays to religion–they massively alienated an entire generation of voters. Sure, they managed to squeak out a couple of presidential victories, but they did it at the cost of losing millions of voters who will probably never fully return. This chart is their legacy in a nutshell.”
“Another George Bush scored a statewide victory in Texas on Tuesday, a win that could pave the way for a much bigger career,” Politico reports.
“George P. Bush — the nephew of former President George W. Bush and son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — was running for land commissioner in the Lone Star State and easily defeated little-known Republican primary opponent David Watts, a businessman from East Texas.”
Former President George W. Bush “will be showing off his new painting hobby at his presidential library in Dallas starting in April,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The exhibit is called ‘The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy,’ and the show sounds as if it will feature paintings other than the ones Bush made depicting himself in the bathtub and in the shower, which a hacker obtained and blasted all over the Web last year.”
“I obviously get slightly emotional talking about our vets because I have an emotional — I’m in there with them.”
— Former President George W. Bush, tearing up in an interview with ABC News when speaking about military veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
“As George W. Bush’s public image improves, more former Bush officials are running for office — and are starting to tout their connections to the former president rather than running from them,” The Hill reports.
“Bush veterans privately admit the president, who left office in 2009 with an approval rating that dipped as low as 25 percent, was an albatross for many years in both primaries and the general election. The Wall Street bailout and other expensive Bush-era programs infuriated the Tea Party base, while Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War tarnished him with independents. But five years later, they say things have changed and that he’s no longer toxic. The former president’s personal approval ratings reached positive territory last year for the first time since early in his second term.”
Jonathan Chait: “The conventional wisdom – propounded by many of the same pundits now equating Obama with Bush – held that Obama’s hardball tactics would backfire. Obama needed to negotiate over the debt ceiling, and didn’t dare change the Senate’s rules… To fail to placate conservatives would only enrage them more. This analysis turned out to have it backward. Congress managed to pass a budget for the first time in three years precisely because Obama
defeated the GOP’s extortion tactics, forcing Republicans to actually trade policy concessions rather than demand a ransom.”
“The prospects for Obama’s second term remain constricted. Not many deals beckon in Congress. The Obamacare rollout was surely a political disaster, but the administration has three more years to get the law up and running. By the end of 2005, George W. Bush had seen the promise of his presidency collapse from justifiably lofty heights. At the end of 2013, Obama stands at just about the same place he began his term.”
The Week looks at the evidence.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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