Biden:"If there seems... 'Mr. President, what you are doing is stupid,' that is a problem"

[dajoki]

WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/05/AR2006120501526.html?nav=hcmodule

Bush Calls Iraq Report One Among Many Ideas
Congress Seems Ready to Work With Findings

By Michael Abramowitz and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 6, 2006; Page A20

<<snip>>

The administration seems to have distanced itself from the commission in recent weeks. White House officials were never wildly enthusiastic about a group co-chaired by a key figure, Baker, from the administration of the president's father. But there was hope that it might be a useful vehicle to provide political cover to do what the White House was interested in doing anyway.

As details of the commission's deliberations surfaced, including ideas long rejected by Bush, that optimistic view seems to have faded in the White House. By yesterday, Bush aides figured the commission was helpful mainly as a way of marginalizing more radical proposals by war opponents, such as a rapid troop withdrawal or partitioning Iraq.

In his public comments, Bush has gone from embracing the upcoming report to casting it as merely one data point among many. His decision to authorize parallel internal administration reviews became a strategy to keep the Iraq Study Group from becoming the primary author of a course change that the president would be pressured to accept -- much as what happened with the Sept. 11 commission.

"It's very hard for me to, you know, prejudice one report over another," Bush said in an interview Monday with Fox News Channel. "They're all important."

<<snip>>

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had a different interpretation of the White House's stance, saying he thought the president and his aides were worried that the report would sound too good to the public. "If there seems to be a bipartisan consensus from a named commission that 'Mr. President, what you are doing is stupid,' that is a problem" for the administration, Biden said in an interview.