Obama's bin Laden mission accomplished

THE INK ON THE Osama bin Laden headlines had hardly dried before the rehab artists for former President Bush went into action to claim victory for their man. Led by the master of Grimms fairy tales, Karl Rove, if Bush hadn't laid the groundwork for bin Laden's capture, President Obama wouldn't be standing in front of the TV cameras to tell the world that the enemy was dead and gone. Hence, Bush/Cheney's defense of illegal torture was fully justified because that's what opened the way for Obama's follow-up success.

Or so it was claimed, despite more accuarate reporting that said the first clues to bin Laden's whereabouts came through normal interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives.

So be it. Believe what you like, with the understanding that the Rovian side of the Bush family is not giving up it's fictional narrative about its former boss. Here's what super sleuth George Bush said of his role in tracking down bin Laden on March 13, 2002:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

The film clips show him shrugging off the question in a feathery manner as if to say , stop bothering me with such trivia. Can't you see that we're busy in Iraq?

Nothing demonstrated the stark difference in presidential demeanor between Bush and Obama than the moments of declaring good news. How can history forget a heroic Bush's wildly orchestrated landing in full flight gear on the aircraft carrier (The Abraham Lincoln!) to announce Mission Accomplished? . It was a photo album creation of a boastful unwavering leader who knew how to get it done. (On the other hand, the campaign rhetoric in 2008 warned that Obama couldn't get it done. Dick Cheney had no doubts that America's exposure to terrorists would be seriously heightened under Obama because it's the nature of Democrats to be soft on our enemies. The trash talking continues today among the die-hards.)

For good reason the self-ascending Bush visit to the aircraft carrier didn't become a national holiday. And eight years later to the day Obama , with presidential self-control befitting the office, walked to the microphone to soberly announce the bin Laden mission accomplished - a statement that electrified the world, if not his political enemies at home.

It was an important stop along the way on the war against terrorism. Obama did it without bells and whistles. Bush's version will remain in the hands of the Karl Roves for embellishment.

The problem with polls naming best presidents

THE HEADLINE on the POLITICO home page declared:

Americans rate Reagan best president

It then told us of a new Gallup poll that reported 19 pct. of those surveyed - 19 pct. - listed Dutch as their favorite. Lincoln came in second with 14 pct. And my hunch is that a majority of Americans couldn't name many presidents before Reagan of maybe even the first George Bush.

So what's the point?

Where are Dubya and Alex these days?

WITH TWO WEEKS to go until Election Day, things have gotten awfully quiet for two Republican compatriots who had no trouble grabbing headlines in past campaigns - George Bush and Alex Arshinkoff. Some observers say the former president has been pre-occupied with the fortunes of the Texas Rangers in the playoffs - a team in which he once held a handsome stake. But I suspect that Republicans find him much more valuable to their fortunes if he remains in the distant centerfield seats where his mere presence won't remind people of the debris he left behind.

Arshinkoff, the Summit County Republican Chairman, may be another matter. In the past he has bombastically shared the stage at rallies in the county for his GOP brethren to flag the party loyalists to the polls. Not so, this year. No big rallies hereabouts, no Arshinkoff. Last summer he even denied knowledge of a fundraiser for Tom Ganley, the Republican challenger to Rep. Betty Sutton, even though the 13 th district covers a lot of ground in the county.

I can only guess that his pal, gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, has told him to remain under wraps to avoid stirring up the kind of controversy that Arshinkoff is known to inspire at campaign time. You may recall that he once threatened to boycott United Way because an innocent scavenger hunt had a Democratic campaign office on its itinerary. He also tore up the GOP playbook by challenging the Republican Hudson City Council that ordered him to take down a big Bush sign from his front yard because it violated the village's zoning ordinance.

Will he still materialize before Election Day? Hard to know about anything he will do. Meantime, the silence is golden.

The George and John Comedy Hour

KASICH: A lot of folks out there don't think our economic mess was caused by you and Wall Street, Mr. President.

BUSH: I'm with you on that one, John. Boy, did we fool them, Pardner! Ha, Ha! As I once said, "Fool them once and shame on...whatever!

Sherrod Brown: It was even worse than you figured

THE PLAIN DEALER has set up its own version of a truth squad by subjecting the words of politicians to what will henceforth be known as a Truth-O-Meter. That's a rather ambitious undertaking inasmuch as pols aren't necessarily the silent types and in today's heated political culture are likely to say things today that they will deny tomorrow.

The first subject to undergo testing in absentia was Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who told Rachel Maddow that 22 million jobs were created under President Clinton, but only 3 million during President Bush's two terms. "The quantitative claims seemed worth checking,"wrote Stephen Koff, the PD's Washington bureau chief.

In checking out those lopsided figures, Koff wrote that Brown erred because Clinton's record was even better, and Bush's much worse:

"In doing so we found a surprise: Brown was wrong - but not in a way he's likely to mind. No fan of President George W. Bush , Brown grossly understated the poor job growth that occurred on Bush's watch.

"The comparison should have been this: Job growth through Clinton' s two terms was 22.7 million. Through Bush's two terms, it was 1.1 million."

Does anybody think that the Democratic senator won't be more than happy to revise his figures the next time the issue comes up?

George W. Bush: When fools rush in...

Making the rounds this April Fool's day is a reprise of George W. Bush's profound comment about being fooled:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again." Nashville, Sept. 17, 2002.

Wanna bet, Mr. President?

Bunning's one plus one: Two trillion $$$$

While Jim Bunning has his defenders in trashing an extension of unemployment benefits because they are too expensive, he was quite supportive of George Bush's tax cuts (at left, in 2001) that ripped more than $1 trillion from the federal treasury. Bunning also strongly supported Bush's $1 trillion Iraq war. My math is usually terrible, but it does appear to add up to $2 trillion - or more. (Notice how all of the budget hawks are happily wearing black suits, funereal fashion, in photo.)

Advice for Obama by the barrel

PRESIDENT OBAMA is getting so much post-election advice from all sides today that he may have to invoke the Bush Rule: Slip off to a big ranch in Texas for some extended R&R and isolated meditation. Hey, it turned Dubya into a motivational speaker for pay. Clearly, with all of the rush to judgment, Obama needs to consult an oracle that will satisfy everybody, pro and con, which is what oracles do. Look what it did for Zelig Lieberman.

Heeeeeeerrs George W, Bush!

IS THERE A SLIGHT chance that the Get Motivated producers have taken a cue from the Balloon Boy (the latest vanishing sensation since Joe the Plumber) by paying George Bush to return to the stage as a speaker at its all-day spectacle in Ft. Worth Monday night? Guaranteeing that the media and late night-comics will be watching, Bush will be paid an estimated $100,000 for a one hour motivational (!) talk. The splinters are already flying about the odd choice for an inspiring pep talk for anybody aspiring to make a new career with a desk on the carpet. As the New York Daily News sized up his scheduled appearance:

"Former Republican President George W. Bush, last seen inspiring millions to vote Democratic - has a new gig as a high priced motivational speaker."

To put the event in context as Bush shares the program with such other luminaries as Zig Ziglar, Terry Bradshaw and Rudy Giuliani, it should be remembered that since he returned to his ranch in Texas with a 22 pct. public approval rating, there has been a serious effort by Karl Rove and others to rehab his ex-boss's dismal record in the image of Knute Rockne's winning strategies or Davy Crockett's heroics at the Alamo. There is even an instant rebuttal to the comics and critics by noting the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton gave high priced speeches after leaving office. Trouble with that argument is Reagan and Clinton left office with decent numbers.

Get Motivated's web site boasts that its programs are "energizing, action-packed, star-filled and fun-filled. " Jon Stewart would not argue about the fun-filled bit. Just wait.

As for me, I'll go back to what I've said before about Dubya. It's the epitaph written by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II for himself:

"Here lies Joseph II, who failed in everything he undertook."

.

LeBron doesn't dunk doughnuts

ASKED BY a magazine who would be his first choice to "dunk on", superstar LeBron James tartly responded:

"If it doesn't have to be a basketball player, George W. Bush. I would dunk on his ass, break the rim and shatter the glass."

To all of the groaners who will doubtless argue that King James should be more respectful, I would only respond that a president who dishonestly led us into a war that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and departed with an economic meltdown really doesn't deserve respect.

The Return of the Middle Ages

AMERICANS LOVE to be fearful. As a child, I learned that from my own dear mother. She warned me that anybody who went outdoors within a couple of hours of having a hair wash would be a candidate for pneumonia. God help me if I did. I could forgive my mother's daily myths. She had my best interests at heart with very little education, and like my father, never read a book

But a political party that today has strong medieval tendencies and devotes most of its time to spreading fear? That takes us back a thousand years when illiterate folks were largely isolated in tiny villages and lived by the fearful myths of the day because there was no way to challenge them. For some it was the weighty threat of excommunication for an imagined misdeed. For others it was the silhouettes of advancing witches on the dusky horizon.

We have our share of witches and warlocks on the horizon today. Having lost to Obama last November, the Republican Party is reaching deeply into its cesspool of fears to win back some ground. It is clubbing folks with preposterous stories of death and destruction. And why not? It worked for George Bush, when he used Saddam Hussein and fictitious weapons of mass destruction to whip up public (and, alas, media) fervor to lead us into disastrous war. As I've written earlier, it was Bush & Co. against Gog and Magog.

Now, the weapon of mass destruction is single payer health care. The right-wing (i.e., Republicans and their enablers) opponents are conjuring up mushroom clouds from coast to coast should the Obama Administration have its way. And if you listen to all of those people shouting their protests at the town hall meetings, it's obvious that once again the know-nothings are gaining a lot of ground. Time and again the government Medicare program that has worked well for millions, including me, has been reduced to fiction by people who have no idea who is behind their Medicare coverage. Where do you think they're getting the frightening disinformation? Guess.

And when Sarah Palin tells you that her parents and infant son would be a victim of a "death panel" if the Administration prevails, it quickly enjoys currency among the uninformed fearful - or are they the don't-want-to-be-inf0rmed fearful? . We are immediately back to the Middle Ages, the only socio-politico culture that seems to work for a party with no progressive ideas of its own. It might help Obama if he told Americans to wash their hair anyway.

All agog about Gog and Magog

DID YOU read that former French president Jacques Chirac said he was "boggled" by George Bush's reasons for appealing to him for French support in 2003 to invade Iraq . I know, still one more leftover from the miserable Bush administration may be over the top, if not tiresome, in dismantling what for the most part has already been dismantled. I get that way myself at times, until a pearl like this one arrives from Chirac's lips.

According to an online report, Chirac said Bush called him and warned that the Middle East was erupting through work of two Biblical evil-doers, Gog and Magog, characters from the Apocalypse. Bush described America's response as a "mission from God"and sought accord from like-minded Christians.

Chirac quoted Bush as saying:

"Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East... The Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before the New Age begins."

Unsurprisingly, biblical diplomacy wasn't good enough to recruit the French,who were later scolded by the administration's symps as being too mulish to merit our consideration of their fried potatoes.

On Bush, baseball and balloting baloney

FROM A FRIEND comes a report of a speech by ex-President George W. Bush to a loving business group in Erie, Pa. in which he first asserted that he would not criticize President Obama - and then spent the next hour attacking Obama's policies on a wide range of issues from the plan to close Guantanamo Prison to the stimulus package. (I'll assume that he didn't also attack his one-time military guru, Gen. Petraeus, for supporting the closure.) The conservative audience responded gleefully to Bush's non-assault assault. As for me, it has often occurred to me when I see Dubya that his mien is much like what inspired Lillian Hellman to say of Norma Shearer: "A face unclouded by thought."

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FROM ANOTHER FRIEND comes word from Baseball America, the go-to publication for all things baseball, that the shrinking newspaper world is impacting on how BA gets its reports from the beat correspondents on the hometown newspaper's sports pages as newspapers shut down or the baseball writers resign for other jobs. This is not the sort of shifting sand that would help us cope with melting glaciers. But it does add another downside piece to the fallout from the industry's melt-down.

On that point, Journalism.Org reported earlier that while the number of Washington-based reporters for American newspapers has shrunk dramatically by more than a third since 1985, the number of foreign media based in DC has increased ten-fold since the late 1960s. There has also been a huge increase in so-called niche newsletters and magazines of interest to special audiences. The decline in the mainstream media has been accompanied by less accountability for whomever is running the government. "Symbolic of the state of this relationship, George W. Bush is the first president since Theodore Roosevelt not to address the National Press Club during his his years in office," Journalism.Org. noted. In this instance, I'd say all's well that ends well.

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It's conclusively OVER! In response to a column by the Beacon Journal's Steve Hoffman, on the recall campaign against Mayor Don Plusquellic, former Councilman Warner Mendenhall, the messy effort's icon, declared "success in many ways." That being the case, should there still be a costly election on Tuesday by Akron's voters? In years of covering elections , I found this one to be the first that failed to connect any of the dots. Could it be that the dots were never there in the first place?

A happier face on Europe

I'M THINKING ABOUT going back to Italy.  The climate, I suspect, will be more comfortable.   I won't have to answer more questions from the native Italians about how such nice people as Americans could be so dumb to elect George Bush. In the dozen or so times that I've wandered hither and yon on the seductive Mediterranean boot, the cross-examination became more intense with each passing year Dubya governed the White House  domestics, if nothing else.   In fact it got downright ugly at times, and they didn't care who knew it. I lived in hopes that they believed me when I insisted that I had voted for the other guy.  Mi dispiace, I would say.  I'm sorry.   

This is not to say that the resident Italians are unfriendly people.      What the guide books never tell you is that if you merely say the wine in whatever region you are staying is the best wine in the whole  world, your host will smile proudly, pour another glass,  and ask if you know a priest in Milwaukee named Fr. Giusti, who happened to be a cousin or something. In my earlier meanderings the kids only asked me if I knew Michael Jordan. In either case, I found gracious ways to get me off the hook and change the subject.  

Except for the burden of having to lamely explain  how nice Americans ended up with a fool as president,  we got along fine.  But the animosity toward the American government has lingered in my mind  (It was just as scathing in Ireland, by the way).   With its resources and diversity, America was to be the democratic model for other countries struggling with greater adversity and far fewer resources, often jammed into borders that were no more than a taxi ride from one country to another in a single afternoon.  .  

So you bet I was pleased to see the welcoming reception that Barack Obama received in Europe!  While the right-wing sorest-losers were desperate to find flaws in Obama's European visit, from continuing to grouse about teleprompted speeches,   to his choice of questioners from the audience, I needed only to look out at his excited crowds to know that there has already been a sea change in  attitude toward our government overseas.  Gail Collins of the New York Times, assessed it as well as anybody in observing that the Obamas "wowed" the Europeans, further noting:

 "We were expecting a good reception, given the fact the previous administration set the bar so low that Barack was able to get hysterical applause just  by telling the crowd of students that Americans don't believe in torturing people." 

Don't underestimate the importance of the rise in affection for a new American president.  European leaders are as conscious of public opinion as we are. ( OK, Bush was a numbing exception, which made it all the worse.)  It might be a little easier dealing with those leaders to resolve mutual concerns if they perceive among their constituents a newly-constituted popularity in the U.S. chief executive.  Even a small change would be refreshing for America's image abroad. .  And for selfish me, I would have more time celebrating a region's wine with my host and talking about that priest in Milwaukee that, somehow,  I never met.        

Todd, the sacrificial lamb

DURING PRESIDENT O'BAMA's press conference, NBC's Chuck Todd neatly framed the fallen level of awareness of the Washington media by asking why Obama had not called upon Americans to make sacrifices during the current recession.  Obama fielded the astonishing challenge cleanly, noting that Americans are sacrificing in numerous ways, including job furloughs and pay cuts.  Sit down, Chuck.

The question did, however, recall a similar question to George Bush by NBC's Brian Williams in the days following 9/11.  To which Dubya staggeringly replied:

"Americans are sacrificing.  I mean, we are, we are...You know, we pay a lot of taxes. Um, the uh...Americans sacrificed when they, um...You know when the economy went into the tank.  Americans sacrificed when...you know, air travel was disrupted." 

    

                 

Running cover for Bush

EVEN AS we await the few moments left until George Bush renditions himself back to Texas, his friends in the administration are doing their damnedest to give him cover while they think of odd things to say - lies, really - about his legacy.  I was particularly astonished that he was said to have read more books than a Doubleday editor, including in the past year the works of Albert Camus.  As one who once took a study course in, of all things, existentialism, I can tell you that Camus doesn't always come through that clearly on first reading, especially so when you are someone who is supposed to be preoccupied with workaday matters like... oh, rising unemployment and closed retail enterprises across the spectrum.  One wonders why his apologists didn't advance  such books as Treasure Island or Wizard of Oz as his night-table reading staples.   His entire cabinet could relate to them and grade the president accordingly.  Besides, being a defiant Frenchman, Camus never regarded himself as an existentialist, although most other literary people do.   But that's another story.

Meantime, regarding the legacy, we are told to be patient in a waiting  game until the truth is fully known about his historic  accomplishments. That tactic recalls the six-month leaps of faith "until we hear from General Petraeus" - now a shopworn quaint phrase no longer useful for the Bushies' political survival.  Karl Rove, Dana Perino, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are all huddling on their own two yard line to throw a 98-yard touchdown pass that would still leave the game well out of reach for them.  So what else is new?   This is a team that has been in denial for so long that they don't recognize the benefit of simply cutting and running  while leaving a toppling world to their successors.  Won't happen.  Not with this gang.  Not with the legacy thing.  It's their last remaining false hope.     

Bush economics 001

President Bush's televised  bird's eye view of the nation's financial crises was so short today that some people were calling for an instant replay.  If you sneezed, you missed it.   He did say, however, that he canceled his travel plans to stay on top of the mess.   As it happened, that change in his daily rounds wasn't at all necessary.