{"id":9617,"date":"2007-01-15T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2007-01-15T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9617.html"},"modified":"2007-01-15T09:00:03","modified_gmt":"2007-01-15T14:00:03","slug":"the-educator-in-chief-makes-his-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-educator-in-chief-makes-his-case\/","title":{"rendered":"The Educator-in-Chief makes his case"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of his new public-relations offensive, the president was on 60 Minutes<\/a> last night, making his best possible case that he still knows what he’s talking about. The interview, to hear Bush tell it, was to give the nation a lesson. “[S]ometimes you’re the commander-in-chief, sometimes you’re the educator-in-chief, and a lot of times you’re both when it comes to war,” Bush said. “I’ve just gotta continue to take my message to the people and to explain to them this is a well-thought-out decision.”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, though, Bush is about as good a teacher as he is president. If the president’s speech on Wednesday night was a dud, his interview on 60 Minutes was at least as bad. This was probably the most noteworthy exchange:<\/p>\n

PELLEY: The Democrat leadership says, “We wanna support the troops who are on the ground. We just wanna redline the extra 20,000.” <\/p>\n

BUSH: Yeah. I will resist that. That would mean that they’re not willing to support a plan that I believe will work and solve the situation. Listen, we’ve got people criticizing this plan before it’s had a chance to work. And I, therefore, think they have an extra responsibility to show us a plan that will work. In other words, they’re saying, “We’re not even gonna fund this thing.” And they’re not gonna give it a chance. <\/p>\n

PELLEY: There’s no Democrat plan. <\/p>\n

BUSH: It doesn’t look like it to me. And maybe there will be one. Now, I’ve listened to a lot of good folks who are Democrats who have expressed their opinions…. It’s my responsibility to put forward the plan that I think will succeed. I believe if they start trying to cut off funds, they better explain to the American people and the soldiers why their plan will succeed. <\/p>\n

PELLEY: Do you believe as commander-in-chief you have the authority to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do? <\/p>\n

BUSH: In this situation, I do, yeah. Now, I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I made my decision, and we’re going forward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush made a joke<\/a> several years ago about the democratic process. “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator,” Bush said.<\/p>\n

I kept thinking about that joke, which was purportedly offered in jest, after hearing the president’s comments on 60 Minutes.
\n
\nAs Bush sees it, there are apparently no limits at all on his ability to wage a war. No matter how one interprets the Constitution, does this even make any sense? Under what circumstances would the Founding Fathers, who were distrustful of an excessively powerful chief executive, create a system whereby a president could wage a war without any checks or balances?<\/p>\n

As Digby put it<\/a>, “I have long said that the Republicans are undemocratic, but now they’re just coming right out and saying it: democracy is all well and good until the people and their representatives object to what the president is doing at which point the people and their representatives become a superfluous ‘committee.’ They have interpreted the words ‘commander in chief’ to mean that the constitution gives the president dictatorial powers during ‘wartime’ (which the president defines).”<\/p>\n

And just as an aside, what was with CBS’s Scott Pelley using the right-wing “Democrat leadership” construction? Does he not know the difference between a noun and an adjective either?<\/p>\n

Other highlights of the interview from my notes:<\/p>\n

* Bush said, “I began to think, well, if failure is not an option and we’ve got to succeed, how best to do so? And that’s how I came up with the plan I did.” Last week, Bush said he didn’t<\/i><\/a> come up with the plan at all.<\/p>\n

* The president defended<\/a> his decision to topple Saddam Hussein, arguing, “Well, our administration took care of a source of instability in Iraq.” Is that really the argument Bush wants to make right now? The problem with pre-2003 Iraq was “instability”? Isn’t the ongoing civil war in Iraq far less “stable” that Saddam’s dictatorial regime?<\/p>\n

* Looking back at earlier mistakes in Iraq, Bush said, “The minute we found out they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so.” Actually, the president has this exactly backwards. The minute we found they didn’t have the weapons, Bush announced<\/a>, “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.”<\/p>\n

* Explaining why he was wrong but not dishonest about pre-invasion Iraq, Bush said, “Everybody was wrong on weapons of mass destruction…. I’d look at the people’s comments when the run-up to the war. They had looked at the same intelligence I had looked at.” This inane talking point has been thoroughly debunked<\/a> so many times, it’s almost painful to hear Bush repeat it as if it were true. It’s not.<\/p>\n

All in all, the educator-in-chief needs to brush up on his lesson plan. Bush has lost any skills of persuasion he may have had, his pitch is a joke, and no one’s buying what he’s selling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of his new public-relations offensive, the president was on 60 Minutes last night, making his best possible case that he still knows what he’s talking about. The interview, to hear Bush tell it, was to give the nation a lesson. “[S]ometimes you’re the commander-in-chief, sometimes you’re the educator-in-chief, and a lot of times […]<\/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-9617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617","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=9617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}