“Where is the blame for the democrats with whom he had to compromise? The RINOs in Congress who sent him all that spending? The corrupt Delay leadership that passed out entitlements like candy? “
Where was his veto pen?
“Where was his veto pen?”
Dear Pessimist:
That is a very good question. I, too, wish in retrospect that he could have taken a harder line. But could he? As Bismark’s cliche says, politics is the art of the possible. My own guess is that Bush woke up every morning during that time, got his intelligence briefing, and after crapping in his pants decided that nothing mattered but the war. I think Bush’s adversaries and even more sadly Bush’s friends exploited that.
Maybe I’m wrong in that hypothesis, and I suppose that we’ll only really know many years from now. But I also think it is very easy for you to look back with perfect hindsight at that time and assert that he could have just gotten out his pen and by writing his name made everything all right.
I am on record in these postings and elsewhere conceding various mistakes that Bush made. Bush himself has been forthcoming. To my way of thinking, at breathtakingly low cost he has kicked the sh*t out of the bad guys, to an extent that will only become clear in years to come; and he did it over the opposition of his own party. I love him for that, and I am willing to forgive many mistakes, including the completely inconsequential ones such as Harriet Meiers.
I wish his fellow party members had defended him more vigorously on Guantanamo Bay, on Katrina, on Valerie Plame, and a host of other tempests in teapots. Where were they? I find their silence inexcusable and self-defeating.
And I would ask you what I asked someone else in this thread: Who is it that you want to lead this party and carry the conservative mantle? If Bush is so bad, who is superior?