Think Progress

Does Rove Think Reagan And Bush Were ‘Weak’ For Discussing The ‘Situation’ They Inherited?

In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama described the dire state of affairs he faced as he entered office a year ago. “One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt,” said Obama.

Conservatives, who often complain that Obama blames former President George W. Bush too much, did not appreciate Obama’s recitation of the facts. “The blaming of the past administration is pathetically unpresidential,” blogged National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez last night. On Fox News this morning, Brian Kilmeade asked former Bush adviser Karl Rove if it’s “good politics” to “bring up your predecessor and talk about your first year in office while looking back at his last year in office?” “No, I think it makes you look weak,” replied Rove. Watch it:

By Rove’s logic, conservative icon Ronald Reagan and his former boss George W. Bush were also “weak.” As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted last night, Reagan “devoted significant portions” of his 1982 State of the Union “to attacking President Carter’s administration for ‘the situation at this time last year’”:

To understand the State of the Union, we must look not only at where we are and where we’re going but where we’ve been. The situation at this time last year was truly ominous. [...]

First, we must understand what’s happening at the moment to the economy. Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that’s only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe; they are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, and spend and spend. [...]

The only alternative being offered to this economic program is a return to the policies that gave us a trillion-dollar debt, runaway inflation, runaway interest rates and unemployment.

Though it wasn’t technically a State of the Union address, when former President Bush first addressed a joint session of Congress in February 2001, he too cast aspersion on his predecessor’s legacy. “Last year, Government spending shot up 8 percent. That’s far more than our economy grew, far more than personal income grew, and far more than the rate of inflation,” said Bush. “We must take a different path.”

Ingraham: Americans Are Saying ‘Maybe That Bush Guy Wasn’t Quite As Bad As We Thought’

This morning, the Fox & Friends crew whined about how the Obama administration “continues to bash President Bush.” It’s a “tactic that has apparently run out of gas,” co-host Steve Doocy said, likely referring to a recent Politico article titled “Democrats’ Bush-bashing strategy goes bust.” Fox then invited contributor Laura Ingraham to comment on the matter:

INGRAHAM: You know when it looked really ridiculous is when President Bush was standing so graciously next to President Obama and President Clinton at the White House. He couldn’t have been more gracious, he couldn’t have been more kind, couldn’t have been more generous.

After everything they’ve said about him and after all the times they’ve trashed him in the past several months, that shows you the character of that man. And I think that’s why a lot of people in these polls are now saying, “Well, maybe that Bush guy wasn’t quite as bad as we thought.”

Watch it:

Ingraham is living in a fantasy world. According to the latest polls released this month, Bush’s job approval ratings have hovered consistently in the low 30s, only a tiny bit above the high 20s he left office with.

Moreover, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted earlier this month, a majority of Americans (51 percent) still blame Bush for our nation’s economic woes. A separate Quinnipiac poll said voters blame Bush more than Obama (55-20 percent) for the current economic conditions. And, in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 67 percent of respondents said Bush deserves a “great deal” of blame for the country’s economic situation.

And of course, while it’s inconvenient for the right wing to acknowledge this, the reason the American public holds such a consistently negative view of President Bush is because his policies did in fact sink this nation into a fiscal mess.

Rove Backs Off His Criticism Of Counterterrorism Center, Perhaps Remembering Chief Is A Bush Holdover »

In recent days, attention has been turning toward Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), in the failed Christmas Day bombing. Politico’s Laura Rozen wrote that it appears that “knives [are] out” for Leiter. On Tuesday, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove also jumped on the NCTC during an appearance on Fox News, saying that the agency was “where the problem probably occurred”:

VAN SUSTEREN: But somebody had the job, Karl, to coordinate all this information into one center place. I cannot believe that after 9/11, we didn’t figure out that we have to have some sort of central resource –

ROVE: Well, we did. We did. [...]

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, who’s in charge of that?

ROVE: The counterterrorism center is where the problem probably occurred because, look, there are lots of — we know that the State Department passed on the information. We know the CIA received it. We know the counterterrorism center received it.

It was surprising that Rove pointed the finger at the NCTC, since Leiter served with him in the Bush administration. Leiter became NCTC director in 2007, and then was retained by the Obama administration. But maybe Rove forgot these details and remembered them only after his Fox News appearance, because today during another Fox interview, he tried to shift blame away from the NCTC:

ROVE: In fact, the biggest problem is not within the NCTC and the intelligence community — Look, I want to say one word of defense for them. There’s a lot of information flowing through there. It seems to me this should have been caught, but there is a lot of information flowing through there, and the expectation that human beings are going to be perfect 100 percent of the time or that the system of computers and algorithms of detection software is going to be perfect 100 percent of the time is just wrong.

In both interviews, Rove insisted that the real problem was with the Obama administration, who decided to “treat the Christmas Day bomber as a criminal defendant” (just like the Bush administration did with the shoe bomber). Watch the two clips:

Today, the White House defended Leiter against a New York Daily News article that Leiter “did not cut short his ski vacation after the underwear bomber nearly blew up an airliner on Christmas Day.” National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough disputed the Daily News’ story, saying that Leiter was “intimately involved in all aspects of the nation’s response to the attempted terrorist attack” and took “six days of annual leave” after the event.

Today in his speech on the attack, Obama made clear that he wasn’t interested in playing the blame game. “Ultimately, the buck stops with me. … When the system fails, it is my responsibility,” he said.

Transcript: More »« Less

Steele: Bush Was ‘Right’ To Wait Six Days To Respond To Shoe Bomber, But Obama Was Still Too Slow »

Continuing his book tour, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today and criticized President Obama’s remarks yesterday on the failed Christmas Day attack. He hit Obama for delivering it “two weeks after the event,” saying it should have instead happened on Christmas Day.

However, just a few moments later, Steele said that President Bush made the right move in waiting six days before commenting on shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001, because “you can’t afford to go much further without being very clear the direction the administration wants to go on this matter”:

STEELE: And that kind of approach that the administration has taken, where it was two weeks after the event before the President stands up there. If he had given that speech on Christmas Day — that he gave yesterday?

BRZEZINSKI: You know, it took six days for President Bush to respond to the Richard Reid shoe bomber. [...]

STEELE: I think the timing was right in the moment because you can’t afford to go much further without being very clear the direction the administration wants to go on this matter.

Watch it:

First of all, Steele is being disingenuous in making it seem like yesterday was the first time Obama commented on the attack. In fact, one of conservatives’ main criticisms was that President Obama waited 72 hours before publicly commenting on the incident (even though he had been actively consulting with his national security experts, who were speaking with the press). So Obama publicly spoke about the attack in under six days — which Steele deemed appropriate in Bush’s case.

Second, Steele said a President should not comment “without being very clear the direction the administration wants to go on this matter.” Obama’s speech yesterday was intended to report on the findings of the ongoing investigations by his counterterrorism and homeland security advisers — something that couldn’t have been done on Christmas Day.

Finally, when President Bush did eventually address the shoe bomber, it wasn’t with a “clear…direction” about where the administration was headed; he mentioned it only in passing, when he said that an American Airlines flight attendant “saw something amiss and responded.” “It’s an indication that the culture of America has shifted to one of alertness, and I’m grateful for the flight attendant’s response, as I’m sure the passengers on that airplane,” he added.

Transcript: More »« Less

Conservatives Should Learn To Google Before Claiming Obama Doesn’t Use The Words ‘Terror’ Or ‘Terrorism’

Last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney attacked the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism, saying that Obama has been “trying to pretend we are not at war.” The White House aggressively hit back at Cheney, saying he either “willfully mischaracterized” Obama or is “ignorant of the facts.” Politifact called Cheney’s criticism “ridiculously” false because “a review of Obama’s statements of the past year makes it clear he has often said the United States is at war against terrorist organizations.”

But Cheney’s ridiculous attack wasn’t the only barb launched by conservatives at Obama over things he supposedly doesn’t say. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) complained both yesterday and today that Obama is not “willing to use the word” terror. As the Plum Line’s Greg Sargent pointed out, DeMint’s claim has no merit. Similarly, The New Republic’s Editor-in-Chief Marty Peretz rejoiced on his blog yesterday that Obama “finally” used “the word ‘terror’” in his weekly address on Saturday:

President Obama used the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” six times in his weekly address to the nation. I don’t know how long it has actually been since he’s uttered those words. But my memory is that it’s been a very long time. By using them, however, he was able to make, as it were, structural corrections, talking about Al Qaeda as “a network of violence and hatred” strung out “from East Africa to Southeast Asia, from Europe to the Persian Gulf.”

Simple research would have let Peretz know that it had “actually been” only two days since Obama referred to the Christmas Day plot as an “attempted act of terrorism” that underlined the need for “continued vigilance on homeland security and counterterrorism efforts.” Indeed, in Obama’s address at West Point announcing his escalation in Afghanistan on Dec. 1, he used variations of the word “terror” six times:

– “America, our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda’s terrorist network and to protect our common security.”

– “Gradually, the Taliban has begun to control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating attacks of terrorism against the Pakistani people.”

– “Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort.” 

– “In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror.”

– “We will strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.” 

– “And that’s why I’ve made it a central pillar of my foreign policy to secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists, to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.”

Peretz also praised a New York Times editorial for using “the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist,’ locutions it otherwise quite faithfully avoids, especially in its news reports.” Clearly, Peretz is unfamiliar with the New York Times’ ample subject category on its website for “terrorism.” To know this, all he would have to do is use what former President Bush called “the Google.”

Rove Attacks Obama Response To Failed Terrorist Plot, Despite Bush’s Delayed Response In 2001

Yesterday on Hannity, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove sharply criticized President Obama’s response to the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day. In particular, Rove went after the fact that Obama issued his first public statement on the matter 72 hours after the event:

CARLSON: This President was not notified until three hours after this incident became known. Is that a long time? It seems like a long time.

ROVE: Look, they woke him up immediately to tell him he won the Nobel Prize but couldn’t bother to interrupt his vacation for three hours to tell him a terrorist tried to bring down a plane on Christmas Day. And the President waits 72 hours before we hear from him, and it’s over 72 hours from the time of the incident to the time that the President spoke today, and then the President said some things that are simply not true.

Watch it:

Rove made similar comments this morning again on Fox News, pointing out that it took Obama “72 hours after the event” to issue a statement from Hawaii, where the President is vacationing. This criticism rings hollow coming from Rove, a former top official in the Bush administration — which waited even longer to comment on a failed airline plot in 2001. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein notes:

On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid — known more infamously as the shoe bomber — failed in his attempt to blow up a Miami-bound jet using explosives hidden in his shoe. Coming less than four months after September 11, there already were deep concerns about a potential attack during the upcoming holiday break. Nevertheless, President Bush did not directly address the foiled plot for six days, according to an extensive review of newspaper records from that time period. And when he did, it was only in passing.

Two days after the incident on Dec. 24, the Boston Globe noted Bush’s silence: “White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that President Bush continued to monitor the situation and receive updates at Camp David. Bush has not issued any statements about the incident.”

Conservatives have also been hammering the Obama administration for treating the Christmas Day plot as a law enforcement issue and for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s remarks that the “system, once the incident occurred, the system worked.” However, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also brushed aside questions about the shoe bomber by saying the matter was “in the hands of the law enforcement people,” and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft made comments similar to those of Napolitano.

Since the Christmas Day events, Obama has been consulting with his top advisers and administration officials have been actively speaking with press, including appearing on the Sunday public affairs shows. Today, Obama again made public comments on the incident while in Hawaii, stating, “But what already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security. We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system, because our security is at stake and lives are at stake.”