The Center for American Progress found a great example of Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, looking back at 2002 with a very selective memory. One might even say he’s relying on “revisionist history.”
Ridge, marking the one-year anniversary of his cabinet agency’s creation, noted the following:
[After 9/11, Bush] knew that we needed a new way to win a new war against a new kind of enemy, and that we needed it fast. And so, he exercised bold leadership, the right leadership, when he, along with Congress, moved at lightning speed by Washington standards to make Homeland Security a new Cabinet Department.
This is total nonsense. Bush didn’t act quickly to create the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11; Democrats in Congress did. In fact, the Bush administration opposed the effort altogether when the agency was first proposed. Bush flip-flopped months later and announced his support for the department in June 2002 — nine months after 9/11. (“Lightning speed”? I don’t think so.)
In fact, Ridge thoroughly embarrassed himself — and looked pretty clueless — during the debate over whether to create the very cabinet agency he was later asked to direct.
Ridge probably hopes no one remembers this, but he actually announced that he wanted Bush to veto any congressional effort to create a Department of Homeland Security — just days before Bush announced he would welcome the department’s creation.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Thursday [May 29, 2002] he would advise President Bush to veto any legislation creating a congressionally authorized Office of Homeland Security if Congress approves a bill this year.
“I’d probably recommend he veto it,” Ridge told a National Journal Group editorial board meeting. In the past, Ridge has asked Congress to hold off on the legislation.
Today’s comments were the first time Ridge has said he would recommend a presidential veto. Ridge said presidents should be “entitled to a few advisers” who owe their loyalty solely to the president.
“I believe that the president and future presidents always would be well served having an adviser coordinating the actions among [the] multiple agencies” charged with protecting homeland security. “I don’t think you get that if you are accountable to Congress,” Ridge said.
Eight days later, Bush announced that he wanted a cabinet-level agency responsible for “protecting homeland security” that is “accountable to Congress.”
And now Ridge hopes we’ve all forgotten about what actually happened so he can claim that the administration “boldly” saw the need for the department and acted with “lightning speed.” How sad.