It’s too damn easy to run out of adjectives with these guys. Shameless, brazen, callous, offensive, disturbing, nauseating, insulting…
Ezra Klein noticed a stunning paragraph in this Time article about the election.
Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.
As if it weren’t bad enough that the White House has allowed the Department of Homeland Security to devolve into a disjointed mess, now the White House wants the agency’s employees to divide their time between terrorist threats and photo-ops for a president who has shown careless disregard for domestic security throughout his term.
Remember all the talk about never playing politics with national security? It was just that — talk. There’s a campaign to run, and if that means manipulating a cabinet agency to orchestrate photo-ops, so be it.
Be sure to remember this story as the campaign progresses. As Ezra noted:
[W]hen Bush does begin planting himself atop bomb sniffing dogs Americans will know what it means: The Dept. of Homeland Security turned in their monthly photo-op. It’s one thing to use 9/11 in an ad or talk about your role in keeping the country safe; it’s a wholly different beast to direct a busy agency that isn’t yet fulfilling its mandate to divert resources to helping you campaign. It’s disgusting.
It sure is.