ThinkProgress Logo

Stories tagged with “Josh Bolten”

Economy

Former Bush Official Josh Bolten Advising BP On How To ‘Defend Its Interests’ And Restore Its Reputation

By Amanda Terkel on Jun 10, 2010 at 9:52 am

BP has embarked on an aggressive campaign to repair its public image in the wake of its disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It has repeatedly run full-page ads in major newspapers, retained high-powered lobbying and public relations firms, and launched a series of television ads with CEO Tony Hayward looking apologetic. The company has even hired Anne Womack-Kolton, a former top aide to Vice President Cheney, to be its new spokesperson.

Now, joining Womack-Kolton in helping BP repair its image is former chief of staff to President Bush, Josh Bolten:

The former European Commission president Romano Prodi is understood to be assisting BP in its attempt to restore its battered reputation in the United States.

The Times understands that Mr Prodi, who twice served as Italy’s prime minister, is a key member of an “international advisory board” assisting BP that also includes Josh Bolten, the former chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Both Mr Prodi and Mr Bolten are former employees of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that advises BP. BP’s former chairman Peter Sutherland also held a senior role at Goldman.

The group has been helping the oil giant to defend its interests against a fierce onslaught from the US Government, which intensified yesterday as it emerged that 44 US Senators have signed a letter demanding that BP does not pay a dividend next month.

Bolten became most famous during the Bush administration when the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Bolten and former Bush counsel Harriet Miers in contempt after they refused to cooperate in an investigation into the administration’s firings of U.S. attorneys.

This aggressive PR campaign by BP may actually be having the opposite effect of what the company is hoping for. Last week, President Obama chastised BP for devoting its resources in this area instead of to the people along the Gulf Coast who are struggling to maintain a living because the spill took away their occupations:

My understanding is, is that BP has contracted for $50 million worth of TV advertising to manage their image during the course of this disaster. In addition, there are reports that BP will be paying $10.5 billion — that’s billion with a B — in dividend payments this quarter.

Now, I don’t have a problem with BP fulfilling its legal obligations. But I want BP to be very clear, they’ve got moral and legal obligations here in the Gulf for the damage that has been done. And what I don’t want to hear is, when they’re spending that kind of money on their shareholders and spending that kind of money on TV advertising, that they’re nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf who are having a hard time.

BP shares “plunged” in London today, with investors “shaken by the prospect that the British oil giant might cut its dividend.” UK business leaders are upset at the criticism the Obama administration is directing at BP, and Prime Minister David Cameron will be speaking with Obama about BP this weekend.

In response to its tumbling stock prices on the New York Exchange last night, BP said it was “not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”

Security

Rice: Under Bush, The U.S. Has Embraced The U.N. ‘Maybe’ More Than Any Other Administration

By Ben Armbruster on Dec 17, 2008 at 1:16 pm

ricebolton2web.jpgDuring a press conference yesterday in New York, a reporter asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “look philosophically” at the state of diplomacy after eight years of the Bush administration and to think of “lessons we can draw out.” Rice then took the opportunity to polish up her boss’s record with the United Nations:

RICE: I think that the United States, under President Bush, has actually used the mechanisms and the councils of the United Nations more than they’ve been used maybe ever, whether it is insisting that Security Council resolutions that have been passed be respected, [or] whether it is seeking to deal with human rights and tyranny cases like Zimbabwe or Burma.

Indeed, the Bush White House has been spending a lot of time lately trying to rewrite the history of the last eight years, mainly due to the fact that President Bush’s failed policies have made him one of the most unpopular outgoing U.S. presidents in modern history.

But Rice has been playing along as well and this latest attempt at legacy building has no basis in reality. The Bush administration’s complete disregard of the U.N.’s will during the run-up to the Iraq war is the obvious example. The administration completely ignored the work of the U.N.’s weapons inspectors (UNMOVIC) at that time and instead attacked Iraq on false WMD pretenses before they could finish the job. Moreover, in 2004, then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the U.S.-led invasion illegal and “not in conformity with the U.N. charter.”

In 2004, the Bush administration also tried (and failed) to remove Mohamed El-Baradei as head of the IAEA — the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog — for being too soft on Iran.

But to top it all off, in 2005, President Bush installed U.N. hater and fervent war hawk John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the world body. Bush wanted Bolton so badly, he “resorted to the 17-month recess appointment to circumvent” opposition to Bolton in the Senate. Bolton famously said “there is no such thing as the United Nations” and if the U.N. building in New York “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

Bush even found space to criticize the U.N. in his final address to the general assembly, saying the organization “only pass[es] resolutions decrying terrorist attacks after they occur” instead of doing something to prevent them “in the first place.”

In 2006, Annan’s deputy, Mark Malloch Brown noted that “[i]n recent years the enormously divisive issue of Iraq and the big stick of financial withholding have come to define an unhappy marriage” between the U.S. and the U.N. Indeed, new U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he looks forward to “a new era of partnership” with Obama.

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up