I noticed recently that one of the new Bush campaign ads, titled “Priorities,” emphasizes the votes John Kerry has missed while on the presidential campaign trail. This strikes me as an unusually dumb move, even for the Bush gang, but let’s explore it a bit.
Bush: “I’m George W. Bush, and I approved this message.”
Narrator: “Leadership means choosing priorities. While campaigning, John Kerry has missed over two-thirds of all votes. Missed a vote to lower health care costs by reducing frivolous lawsuits against doctors. Missed a vote to fund our troops in combat.
“Yet Kerry found time to vote against the Laci Peterson law that protects pregnant women from violence.
“Kerry has his priorities. Are they yours?”
Just to rebut the facts for a moment, Kerry has said repeatedly that he’ll return to cast votes on crucial legislation when his vote is needed. The vote on funding for the troops, for example, passed 95-0. Kerry missed it because it wouldn’t have mattered, but Bush leaves little things like context out in his drive to deceive.
But putting the substance of the attack aside for a moment, I can’t help but wonder how Bush feels justified in attacking anyone for missing work.
After all, this is the same guy who’s spent much of his presidency at one of his several “retreats.”
This is Bush’s 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.
In fact, if “leadership means choosing priorities,” as Bush’s ad argues, I’d like to hear an explanation for why the president decided to take off all of August 2001, even after receiving a briefing from the CIA about an al Queda plan to attack inside the United States.
The revelation came this morning, when CIA Director George Tenet was on the stand. Timothy Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, asked him when he first found out about the report from the FBI’s Minnesota field office that Zacarias Moussaoui, an Islamic jihadist, had been taking lessons on how to fly a 747. Tenet replied that he was briefed about the case on Aug. 23 or 24, 2001.
Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, “I was not in briefings at this time.” Bush, he noted, “was on vacation.” He added that he didn’t see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. “You never talked with him?” Roemer asked. “No,” Tenet replied.
And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn’t talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.
Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President’s Daily Brief (by one of Tenet’s underlings), warning that this attack might take place “inside the United States.” For the previous few years — as Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director, revealed this morning — the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.
And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn’t with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice — as she has testified — wasn’t with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.
A USA Today story, written right before Bush took off, reported that the vacation — scheduled to last from Aug. 3 to Sept. 3 — would tie one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest that any president had ever taken.
So, to paraphrase the BC04 campaign ad, Bush has his priorities. Are they yours?