Bush Still Can’t Get Any Respect

The Washington Post doesn’t seem to be as reflexively anti-Bush as it once was, but sometimes it slips back into its old habits. Like this article on the President’s image as a “wartime CEO at a dignified remove from the twists and turns of the attack on Iraq, with his staff insisting that he pays little attention to the televised bombing.” Rather than noting the obvious fact that the President is not a general and he naturally leaves the military campaign to the professionals, the Post quotes anonymous “analysts” to the effect that “the decision inside the White House to accentuate that image in the opening days of the war also looked like an effort to insulate Bush from temporary setbacks while setting him up for credit if the invasion ends as the big success his aides say they expect.”
The President just can’t win with these guys. He would be a fool to micromanage a military campaign–a seemingly obvious fact. It would seem equally obvious that the President doesn’t have a lot of time to spend watching television, yet the fact that he isn’t glued to a TV set trying to count casualties in Baghdad–not to mention that he has much better sources of information than CNN–is somehow spun to suggest that he may be callous. I really believe that history will accord President Bush the credit he deserves, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for it any time soon.

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