Kevin Drum noticed yesterday that Jay Nordinger at National Review is livid that Wesley Clark has accused Bush of putting Halliburton’s interest before Iraq’s.
Specifically, Clark said that it seemed to him that Bush is “more concerned about the success of Halliburton than having a success strategy in Iraq.”
Nordinger considers the remark so awful that it should be considered “disqualifying.” After all, Nordinger says, “That amounts to a charge of treason.”
The argument is not entirely without merit. I think Clark may have pushed it a little too far with this one. Sometimes candidates on the campaign trail let a remark get away from them; I suspect this was one of those instances. It was a mistake.
But as Drum noted, Clark’s remark is certainly no worse than what Bush said about the Democratic majority in the Senate in September 2002.
“The Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people,” Bush said, effectively accusing Senate Dems of, well, treason.
Mark A. R. Kleiman, who like me, believed Clark was in the wrong on this one, believes Bush’s charge was actually worse. I’m inclined to agree.
“Clark was right to say that the evident decision to let Halliburton and others make out like bandits on war contracts placed politics ahead of national security, while Bush had no basis whatever for the parallel charge aimed at Senate Democrats who didn’t want to let him turn the Department of Homeland Security into a patronage dump for Karl Rove,” Kleiman explained.
Nevertheless, I wondered if Nordinger or any other National Review writer felt compelled to criticize Bush for accusing Dems of putting “special interests” above “the security of the American people.” I checked the archives and couldn’t find a thing. What a shock.