As a rule, Laura Bush’s policy opinions are irrelevant. It’s not personal, it’s just that she’s not an elected official, she has no obvious power to speak of, and her comments are rarely of any consequence.<\/p>\n
But that doesn’t stop her from popping off quite a bit. Take her appearance<\/a> on Larry King’s show last night.<\/p>\n Tonight on Larry King Live, First Lady Laura Bush said she understands “how the American people feel” when they express frustration over Iraq, but insisted that “to leave now would be a serious mistake.” She said of Iraqis, “This is their opportunity to seize the moment, to build a really good and stable country.”<\/p>\n As AmericaBlog first noted, Bush added, “[M]any parts of Iraq are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n On the substance, the First Lady doesn’t know what she’s talking about. There’s not “one” discouraging bombing a day — there are 185 insurgent and militia attacks<\/a> every day. The number of daily attacks has been going up every month for a year.<\/p>\n But for Laura Bush, it’s still the media’s fault. Indeed, as far as she’s concerned, it’s always<\/i> the media’s fault. Two months ago, the First Lady told<\/a> MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell, “I do know that there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren’t covered. And I think that the drum beat in the country from the media, from the only way people know what is happening…is discouraging.” Mrs. Bush added that she hopes there is “more balanced coverage by the media” in the future.<\/p>\n Indeed, our resident White House media critic complained to Bill O’Reilly<\/a> in 2004 that the “there’s a big move away from actual reporting” and there’s too much “opinion” in the media. (Yes, she apparently missed the irony.)<\/p>\n Why does Laura Bush keep inserting herself in political debates in awkward ways? In May, she dismissed public opinion and said, “As I travel around the United States…A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘Stay the course<\/a>‘.” Around the same time, Laura Bush jumped into the immigration debate, saying that the National Anthem “should be sung in English, of course<\/a>.”<\/p>\n A few months before that, during a visit to Liberia, the First Lady said that she does not believe<\/a> Republicans are mired in a “culture of corruption,” and added that she would be “glad to campaign for Republicans who ask me to campaign for them or do fundraisers for them.”<\/p>\n Laura Bush has also weighed in on the anti-gay constitutional amendment<\/a>, Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure<\/a> as Defense Secretary, and gun control policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the First Lady sharing her opinions on matters of politics and public policy, but I think it’s a little odd that a) the right used to complain bitterly when Hillary Clinton did the same thing; and b) if Laura Bush wants to remain above the fray, why does she keep making controversial political statements?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a rule, Laura Bush’s policy opinions are irrelevant. It’s not personal, it’s just that she’s not an elected official, she has no obvious power to speak of, and her comments are rarely of any consequence. But that doesn’t stop her from popping off quite a bit. Take her appearance on Larry King’s show last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nShortly before the November elections, the First Lady was asked about the Michael J. Fox campaign ads on stem-cell research. Bush sided with critics<\/a> of the actor, telling a C-SPAN audience, “It’s always easy to manipulate people’s feelings, especially when you are talking about diseases that are so difficult.”<\/p>\n