9 AM EST Thursday: No More Bush Library Jokes!

Instead, we can focus on how come all the fancy Decision Points® Theatre interactivity doesn’t give us a “choice” on the real question: stopping the Florida recount.

 

 Like a very fancy high school.

George W. Bush: The Decorous War Criminal

 Fashion Statement bush-jacket

Not resting on his laurels from making the Associated Press a Washington punchline, Ron Fournier seems committed to dragging the National Journal down too. Sensing the change in the seasons, Fournier felt compelled to mark Bush Library Week with a thoughtful wad of pap entitled ‘Go Ahead, Admit It: George W. Bush Is a Good Man’

For proof, look no further than the Dignity of the Office dress code Bush strictly enforced:

“The same sense of dignity compelled Bush to forbid his staff to wear blue jeans in the White House. Male aides were required to wear jackets and ties in the Oval Office.

This is a very tired old lie, exploded moments after former Bush Chief of Staff Andy Card made the claim in 2009 as part of an attack on those lax Obama staffers.  It has had a vigorous half life among idiots, but Fournier seems determined to strike at the National Journal’s reputation too.

He is everything awful about Washington:

“Fournier wants you people to remember that politeness is always measured by the thank you notes that a person sends, not the people that one indiscriminately bombs without provocation.”

He’s an old hand at this, having offered Karl Rove solace and advice in his difficult work faking up the Pat Tillman death narrative.

George W. Bush Library: Memories Are Made Of This

 It’s Like They Never Left  brooksbrosriot

It’s almost Bush Library Eve, and the witches are emerging to cast their spells, trying to persuade a reluctant public that it really wasn’t as bad as all that.  Part of the coven is Stephen F. Knott,  author of “Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror and His Critics.”

Knott is a long time fan of executive action, weeping for presidential powers lost when the Supreme Court pointed out that Bush couldn’t just wing it at Guantanamo. He dismisses criticism of Bush era torture by pointing [pg 125] to the Truman administration’s wholesale mobilization of ex-Nazis to fight the Commies, so Hitler!

He whines about pundits ganging up on poor George in the pages of the Washington Post, whose editorial page is adorned with not one but two former Bush speech writers – Michael Gerson, the nice one, and the unspeakable Mark Theeson, portly torture enthusiast.

Knott goes after  historians sullying themselves as pundits, calling for careful archival research in the long twilight of power. He’s a professor at the U.S. Naval War College,  but he’s more then just an intellectual adornment of the Navy’s White Walkers. Among Knott’s achievements is a stint co-directing the University of Virginia’s Reagan administration oral history project, where the grizzled veterans whiled away the hours not answering toothless questions.  [see bottom graphs]

Knott quotes Sean Wilentz’s claim for Bush’s uniqueness:

“No other U.S. president “failed to embrace the opposing political party” in wartime, Wilentz claimed, despite numerous examples to the contrary, such as when Franklin D. Roosevelt compared his Republican opponents to fascists in 1944.”

Roosevelt had Republican Secretaries of the Navy and of War, and Knott doesn’t specify where FDR made these shameful claims, but I have an idea where he’s coming from.

 

Not Roosevelt, but his supporters, engaged in a lot of war and election melding, with domestic enemies denouncing “Roosevelt’s War” morphing into Hitler, rooseveltswar and cartoon workingmen called on to ” sidetrack defeatist limited.”

 

The ’44 Dewey campaign made an early run at what would soon become a Republican perennial, charging that the Democrats were but a front for the Reds.  Dewey elaborated on  the theme in a Boston speech, with the added frisson of Jew baiting in the form of that year’s “You Didn’t Build That.”  Much of the GOP campaign was built around a Roosevelt quote from the smoke filled rooms birthing Harry Truman.  FDR had his minions feel out CIO union leader Sidney Hillman about dumping Vice President Henry Wallace for James F. Brynes,  Hillman wouldn’t go along, and somehow Harry Truman emerged, along with the immortal phrase “Clear It With Sidney” clear it with sidney

Republicans had great fun with “Sidney”, a clear marker for Jews. The comment sections of World Net Daily were sadly not yet available, so their mouth breathing followers entertained themselves  scribbling laughtastic limerick suggestions:

 

“Political pots have a lid,

Beneath which the cooking is hid.

But it’s easy to tell

From the Bolsehvik smell

Which stew was concocted by Sid.”

Dewey was called out by Roosevelt’s Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, accusing the Governor of toying with red baiting, fascism and  “desperate, contemptible fanning of the flames of religious hatred.

 

One president did flat out Nazi bait Dewey, that nice Harry Truman in a 1948 episode of “feistiness.”

deweyhitler

 

George W. Bush: Possible Inspiration To Take Up The Brush

Resolute Or Haunted?bushinoil

The Two Churchills: Barack Busted

Disappointing Office Seeker 

Barack Obama’s banishment of a Churchill bust from the Oval Office was a signature moment in his presidency, the disrespecting of our special relationship with Britain and source of endless mock conservative head-scratching, who wondered why anyone might be cool towards  the beloved Winnie. 

Some hearts thrilled.

Friday came word that everybody had it all wrong, the bust never left the White House, and rested in a place of great honor.

Heady Days  

But, sadly, no.

Rather then own up to their imperial blusterer banishment, the Obama White House tried to be cute, and got caught.  Two Churchill busts by the same sculpture have had a spot in the White House, one remains, and the Bush related one lives at the British embassy.

So Obama hadn’t taken a stand against imperialism, delivered a rebuke to Tony Blair’s Bush Poodle-ism, or spared the nation from Churchillian blowhard-ism.

Glory Days 

They dodged, made no one happy, and have now reinvigorated one of the right’s stale talking points which live in endless repetition on World Net Daily.

  Just when Mitt Romney’s bumptious London visit had displayed the the stupid pretension of the Churchill cult, the hearty iteration of Newt Gingrich’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” crack-pottery.