Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 192
November Surprises
“He is like the most focused, disciplined guy. To imagine being a former
president and not having an opinion on anything over the last four
years, really? I
mean, to have that discipline, to be respectful of the president that
hasn’t been as respectful of him as he should have been? Man. I could
have never done that.”
— Jeb Bush, in a CNN interview, on his brother, former President George W. Bush.
Gawker “has obtained more photographs of George W. Bush’s paintings,
originally taken from the former president and his family’s email
accounts by a hacker using the name ‘Guccifer,’ and this may be the most
interesting batch yet.”
On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, Gawker published former President George W. Bush’s private email address.
Texas A&M university students surprised former President H.W. Bush with a flash mob.
George Prescott Bush filed the official paperwork to run for Texas land commissioner next year — and put out a campaign video — “hoping to use a little-known but powerful post to continue his family’s political dynasty in one of the country’s most-conservative states,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
“He has such a passion for painting, it’s amazing. He’s going to go down in the history books as a great artist.”
— Artist Bonnie Flood, quoted by Fox 5 Atlanta, on teaching former President George W. Bush how to paint.
Rep. Mike Conway (R-TX) has asked for a “reconnaissance survey” of the Bush family home in Midland, Texas in an effort to turn the property into a part of the National Park Service, the Abilene Reporter News reports.
The Bush family lived in the home for four years, from 1951 to 1955.
Samuel Goldman: “It takes a long time for political parties to recover from defeat. Since winning suggests that they’re doing something right, it takes even longer to recover from victory. Because it reassured Republicans that aggressive war, fiscal policies that favor the rich, and the ideologically-inspired transformation of beloved domestic programs were fundamentally popular, the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 was like a drug that relieves symptoms without treating the underlying disease. Conservative intellectuals must help the GOP break its dependence on these dangerous nostrums — and its continuing allegiance to the doctor who prescribed them.”
Out today: All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings.
CNN notes that many of the letters written by George H.W. Bush are in defense of his son, George W. Bush: “Now I see some of his most nasty critics trying to shoot down my beloved son – shoot him down by mean spirited attacks. I was a scared kid back then. Now I am just an angry old man hurting for my son.”
In an upcoming documentary about the legacy of Dick Cheney, Foreign Policy notes the former vice president lashes out at Condoleezza Rice for overriding his recommendation to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.
Said Cheney: “I thought [destroying the reactor] would reassert the kind of authority and influence we had back in ’03 when we took down Saddam Hussein and eliminated Iraq as a potential source of WMD. Condi was on the wrong side of all those issues so we had significant issues.”
“In his 2011 memoir In My Time, Cheney called the former diplomat ‘naive’ for her attempts to negotiate with North Korea and said she once ‘tearfully admitted’ her mistakes to him in his office.”
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) told a Libertarian conference over the weekend that former Vice President Dick Cheney would probably end up in hell for the Iraq War, the Huffington Post reports.
Said Jones: “Congress will not hold anyone to blame. Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.”
“There’s a lot of ill will towards Sen. Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly. At one point, he said he was the worst president since Herbert Hoover, said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which is nonsense. He was very ‘anti ‘his own party, and people don’t forget that.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in an interview on Fox News, explaining the GOP backlash against Chuck Hagel.
“I think the President came to power with a worldview that’s fundamentally different than mine. The sense that he wanted to reduce U.S. influence in the world. He wanted to take us down a peg.”
— Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview on CBS This Morning.
The Cloakroom: Looking for psychological clues in the secret art work of George W. Bush.
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was playing golf at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and hit a spectator on the sixth hole “after a bad swing went 50 yards into the gallery,” Yahoo Sports reports.
“The ball smacked the female fan in the forehead, causing what was later called concussion-like symptoms and while the lady that got hit wouldn’t give her name, Rice got an assistant to get her number so she could later contact her to make sure she was alright.”
“The apparent hack of several e-mail accounts has exposed personal photos and sensitive correspondence from members of the Bush family, including both former U.S. presidents,” The Smoking Gun reports.
“The photos and e-mails were uploaded yesterday to an online account that appears to have been hacked for the purpose of hosting the material… Included in the hacked material is a confidential October 2012 list of home addresses, cell phone numbers, and e-mails for dozens of Bush family members, including both former presidents, their siblings, and their children.”
“George Prescott Bush is gearing up to run for a little-known but powerful office in a state where his family already is a political dynasty and where his Hispanic roots could help extend a stranglehold on power Republicans have enjoyed for two decades” the AP reports.
Said Bush: “We for sure are running, the question is the office.”
Germany’s respected news weekly Der Spiegel mistakenly published an obituary for former President George H.W. Bush, hours after a family spokesman said the 88-year-old was recovering from illness, the AP reports.
The unfinished obituary appeared on Der Spiegel‘s website for only a few minutes Sunday before it was spotted by Internet users and removed.
NPR reports Bush was actually moved out of intensive care.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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