In Bill Sammon's new book 'Strategery' (how much news did Sammon have to cover up to get this kind of access) he is going to say that
Bush stated he felt Osama Bin-Laden's last minute videotape released right before election 2004, helped him.
And in the closest re-elect for an incumbent since Woodrow Wilson, anything that helps in the final days is by its nature critical; such an admission from the President is tantamount to saying that Bin Laden pushed him over the edge. And that his re-election, far from an endorsement of Bushonomics and his War on Terror, hung on a last-minute scare?
Certianly Kerry believed the tape had a huge impact.
I thought it was going to help," Bush said. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."
What's shocking is not that some TV analyst said it, but is that it's in Bush's own mind. It's not so much that people liked me, Bush thinks, but Osama didn't like me and people liked that. Not exactly a big endorsement for your Presidency there sir.
Let me make another point here. If, as the Nation's First Completely Moral President, you TRULY felt that way, if you privately held a belief that you would gain politically at Kerry's expense because of Osama, your obligation sir as President was to go out there and remind voters that the opinion of the Nation's greatest enemy should have no impact on who you vote for. That the opinion of a "two-bit terrorist" should have no impact on whether you select me or "that Punk John Kerry." Of course there was no such statement.
But ethics, fair elections, that's a lost cause, isn't it? Now given that he made this admission, we know that instead, Bush chose to take the freebie, ride the wave and enjoy the benefits of Osama's "endorsement" and Al Jezzera's timely relay, all the while knowing it would help him and hurt Kerry and democracy.
That Bush would quietly reap the benefits is not the real shocker, but that Bush would admit that 'Jazzera' did it, is.
And who really suffers here is not just American Democracy but Ken Melhman. He thought it was his Ohio phone-chain strategy.