President Seeks to Inform Democratic Candidates
If you have read or listened to Hillary Clinton’s speeches and answers to questions about the war in Iraq lately, you have probably noticed she is backing away from saying she will make a quick withdrawal from Iraq if she is elected president.
The reason may be some advice and information she and other Democratic candidates are getting from President Bush himself.
President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.
In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”
Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”
“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”
To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event of a Democratic victory in November 2008.
“It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”
To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.
“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”
A man who is concerned for his country above party is one who would advise potential presidents to give themselves wiggle room on the Iraqi question so they don’t make fools of themselves in front of their electorate the way Pelosi and Reid have done.
I remember President Bush saying in one of his State of the Union addresses that he didn’t want to leave a mess for the next person to have to clean up.
I believe that’s why he says he’s doing the heavy lifting now, and is willing to take any blame heaped on him by too many who are willing to see him as an evil man.
It is my belief President George W. Bush will go down in history as one of our greats, along with Roosevelt and Truman, but that will happen long after he leaves office.
It is also contingent on the fact that the Islamist radicals do not establish their world caliphate by having a new president or congress somewhere down the line caving in to their demands and therefore having our history re-written to suit their means.
Written by ~J~
Big Mo Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 9:48 amVisit Big Mo
I heartily agree. It’s one of the reasons why I still support him. He gets the big picture and rises above the petty politics of the moment.
Real leaders do that. They look at long-term consequences and transformations, long-term solutions instead of quick fixes, and are absolutely hated for it. Some tend to downplay or ignore the politics of the moment, and suffer for it. (Wait until you read what I have to say about Ulysses S. Grant - you’ll see this in spades.)
When I read this story, I knew — again — that Bush is a real man and a real leader. Like he said BACK IN 2001, this war isn’t going to go away quickly, and it will be fought for a long time. Helping his potential successors make sure they don’t box themselves in with their rhetoric is one of the most statesmanlike, most presidential and most humble (as in servantlike) things that ANY American leader has ever done.