Governor Bush in Pittsburgh, October 26, 2000 (from
Nexis, partial text
here):
I know you can't take the politics out of politics. I'm from Texas; I'm a realist. But I'm convinced our government can show more courage in confronting hard problems, more goodwill toward the other side and more integrity in the exercise of power. This isn't always easy, but it's always important.
It's what the people expect of their leaders, and it's what leaders must require of themselves. My administration will provide responsible leadership.
And finally, a leader must uphold the honor and the dignity of the office to which he had been elected. (APPLAUSE) In my administration, we will ask not only what is legal, but what is right. (APPLAUSE) Not just what the lawyers allow, but what the public deserves. (APPLAUSE) In my administration, we'll make it clear there is the controlling legal authority of conscience. (APPLAUSE) We will make people proud again, so that Americans who love their country can once again respect their government.
Just a little stroll down memory lane in the extended copy.
As with any such project, you could literally add a thousand similar links and not even scratch the surface. No commentary provided; none is really required.
I'm a realist
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
(Ron Suskind,
NYT, Oct. 17, 2004)
Goodwill toward the other side I
With one party controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, and having little fear of retaliation by the opposing party, the House leadership is changing the way laws are made in America, favoring secrecy and speed over open debate and negotiation. Longstanding rules and practices are ignored. Committees more often meet in secret. Members are less able to make changes to legislation on the House floor. Bills come up for votes so quickly that elected officials frequently don't know what's in them. And there is less time to discuss proposed laws before they come up for a vote.
(Susan Milligan,
Boston Globe, October 3, 2004--see also parts
2 and
3)
Goodwill toward the other side II
This has led to some unusual confrontations: When House Ways and Means chairman Bill Thomas recently tried to push a bill through committee without giving Democrats sufficient time to read it, Democrats balked and left, at which point Thomas called Capitol Police to retrieve them (he later apologized).
(Liz Marlantes,
Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 2003)
Integrity in the exercise of power I
WASHINGTON (AP) - For the better part of two years, the word coming out of the Bush White House was that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a female CIA officer's identity and that whoever did would be fired.
But Bush spokesman Scott McClellan wouldn't repeat those claims Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledging the political operative spoke to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, one of the reporters who disclosed Valerie Plame's name.
(Pete Yost,
Associated Press, July 11, 2005)
Integrity in the exercise of power II
Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
(
Downing Street Memo, July 23, 2002)
Responsible leadership
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake that has made the world a more dangerous place, but a swift withdrawal would make matters worse, Pakistan's president said this weekend.
"I think it's less safe," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
Asked whether he considered the invasion a mistake, the Pakistani leader said: "With hindsight, yes. We have landed ourselves in more trouble, yes."
(December 6, 2004)
Honor and dignity I
An unrepentant Vice President Cheney begrudgingly admitted yesterday that he cursed at Sen. Pat Leahy and bragged that he felt good about it.
A smirking Cheney tried to sidestep the issue of whether he launched the F-word, first saying with a laugh he "probably" did.
But when Fox News' Neil Cavuto pressed him on whether he regretted his choice of words, the venom-tongued veep added, "No. I said it, and as I said, I felt better about it afterward."
Sources said Cheney told Leahy, "Go f--- yourself," after the vice president complained he didn't like the Vermont Democrat attacking Halliburton. The Pentagon says Halliburton, formerly headed by Cheney, overcharged taxpayers $186 million in Iraq, and Leahy calls it war profiteering.
(Kenneth Bazinet,
New York Daily News, June 26, 2004)
Honor and dignity II
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.
(Murray Waas,
The American Prospect)
Not only what is legal, but what is right
The disclosure that the Justice Department advised the White House in 2002 that the torture of al Qaeda terrorist suspects might be legally defensible has focused new attention on the role President Bush played in setting the rules for interrogations in the war on terrorism.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that Bush set broad guidelines, rather than dealing with specific techniques. "While we will seek to gather intelligence from al Qaeda terrorists who seek to inflict mass harm on the American people, the president expects that we do so in a way that is consistent with our laws," McClellan said.
White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales said in a May 21 interview with The Washington Post: "Anytime a discussion came up about interrogations with the president, . . . the directive was, 'Make sure it is lawful. Make sure it meets all of our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statutes and applicable treaties.' "
An Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, addressed to Gonzales, said that torturing suspected al Qaeda members abroad "may be justified" and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation" conducted against suspected terrorists.
(Mike Allen and Dana Priest,
Washington Post, June 9, 2004)