Clift: Bush’s Bluster - "frat-boy banter about “high-priced news guys"

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Bush's inattention to North Korea is just one example of the price Americans have paid for his need to prove himself worthy of his office.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Oct 13, 2006

Oct. 13, 2006 - The sense of desperation Republicans feel about the impending election has finally permeated the White House, where the president did the equivalent of a rain dance Wednesday sounding the drums for disaffected conservatives to please save the country from Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi. With North Korea and Iran emboldened, and Iraq spiraling into sectarian violence, Bush sought refuge in frat-boy banter about “high-priced news guys” in pinstripes.

What once passed for geniality was so off the mark amidst the serious news that Bush looked and sounded unhinged. At the end of an hour of bleating about how high the stakes are, and how dangerous the enemy is, Bush’s frustration was evident. He glared at his aides as he turned to go back to the Oval Office, as if to say they made him do this press conference and he knew it was a bad idea. “I remember how Clinton used to give us those looks,” chuckles former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who says what Bush is doing is trying to “pivot” to new material that will pump up his base for the election.

With some 20-odd days to go until the vote, Republicans have settled on Pelosi and taxes, linking the Democrats’ past inclination to raise taxes with the likely next speaker of the House, a liberal woman from San Francisco. Pelosi has not been highly visible during this period, making it harder for the GOP to turn her into a target. Most voters have no idea who she is. Republicans are sending out direct-mail pieces featuring the faces of the Democrats who will take over key congressional committees; not surprisingly, several are African-American, and they are prominently featured.

The other part of the GOP game plan is blaming Bill Clinton for North Korea’s apparent entry into the nuclear club earlier this week. With Bush everything is personal. Clinton may have only achieved a holding pattern in the rogue regime’s nuclear ambitions, but Bush never followed through or fully focused on the growing threat North Korea posed. McCurry was at the State Department in ’94 when Pentagon war planners showed up to brief Secretary of State Warren Christopher about what would happen if diplomacy didn’t work. A pre-emptive military strike was on the table. With Clinton’s nervous blessing, former president Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang and met with Kim Jong Il, which led to the “Agreed Framework” giving North Korea two light-water reactors for peaceful use in exchange for shutting down the reactor producing plutonium.

The bluster grows out of Bush’s worldview. People are good or bad, and they’re with us or against us. He deals with the good people and he punishes the evil people—he doesn’t negotiate with them. The Six-Party Talks that Bush touted in his press conference Wednesday are a nice idea, but they are unwieldy. There are 60 to 100 people at every meeting, and the chance of having any real negotiation is minimal unless they break into working groups. U.S. negotiators were not allowed to talk directly with North Korea unless everyone else was present.

article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15253223/site/newsweek/


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