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George W. Bush 
Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 06:27:34 AM MST
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What makes someone Presidential? I am not talking about policy, since there is a lot (some of folks who don't agree with me will say almost none) of difference in policy, but that quality that makes you think of a president as the President?
Looking a back on the presidents I have been aware of in my life I am still not sure how to define that. We talk a lot about leadership. I have been really disappointed in President Obama's leadership. For all that he has achieved legislation that meets a carefully parsed description of his campaign promises; he has really not taken a lot of what look like strong stands.
It was, we are assured, a tactical move to have the president mostly stay out the process. I was willing to take that at face value at the time, but at this point given the disappointments in terms of other issues that really matter to me (torture accountability, full civil rights for gay citizens, EFCA) I don't really see him as a strong leader.
Still, is that what it means to be presidential? A strong man? President Bush, for all that he was a feckless clown, was willing to stand strong on issues. It got us into a totally unjustifiable war that is going to cost upwards of 3 trillion (3,000 billion) when all is said and done. He was so "strong" that he was wiling to tell the world, including our allies, that you are with us or against us.
At the same time he suffered from some waffling and showed lots of signs of being pushed around by his own party. Take the nomination then withdrawal of Harriet Myers for the Supreme Court. It was a goofy and overreaching nomination, but the backlash from his own party caused him to get her to withdraw. I think that we wound up with a worse Chief Justice in John Roberts, who is at least smart to go along with being unfailingly conservative. Ms. Myers would have been such a dufus she would have never been made Chief Justice.
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Fri Jun 04, 2010 at 12:33:09 PM MST
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"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush told a Grand Rapids audience Wednesday, of the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. "I'd do it again to save lives."
huffingtonpost.com
Bold text added by the diarist
President Obama says "We can't go backwards"
Ex-President and Unindicted war criminal George W. Bush is basically saying "Why not go backwards, look at the wonderful legacy I have left you!"
Yeah, those were WAR CRIMES, the kind Reagan forbid and made illegal under US law, but, now that you have reminded us that the only thing in your legacy that you want to remind us of is how torture worked in your book, I say we encourage George W. to keep talking. Keep reminding us of that legacy, Georgie, cause you sure didaheckuvajob.
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Tue Apr 27, 2010 at 10:58:01 AM MST
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The Obama Justice Department (on April 15th 2010)* announced that it has secured a ten-felony-count indictment against Thomas Drake, an official with the National Security Agency during the Bush years.
~snip~
(T)he DOJ alleges "that between approximately February 2006 and November 2007, a newspaper reporter published a series of articles about the NSA," and it claims "Drake served as a source for many of those articles, including articles that contained classified information."
~snip~
Although the indictment does not specify Drake's leaks, it is highly likely (as Shane also suggests) that it is based on Drake's bringing to the public's attention major failures and cost over-runs with the NSA's spying programs via leaks to The Baltimore Sun.
salon.com
Bold text and some editing* done by the diarist
The indictment of Thomas Drake has NOTHING to do with the illegality of the Bush warrantless wiretapping program, rather, it has to do with Drake's uncovering of major failures and cost over-runs within the domestic spying program. As Greenwald writes . . .
I used to write post after post about how warped and dangerous it was that the Bush DOJ was protecting the people who criminally spied on Americans (Bush, Cheney Michael Hayden) while simultaneously threatening to prosecute the whistle-blowers who exposed misconduct. But the Bush DOJ never actually followed through on those menacing threats; no NSA whistle-blowers were indicted during Bush's term (though several were threatened ). It took the election of Barack Obama for that to happen, as his handpicked Assistant Attorney General publicly boasted yesterday of the indictment against Drake.
salon.com
Bold text added by the diarist
Wait, wait, wait! If Obama's DoJ is prosecuting crimes from the Bush era isn't that an act of "Looking backwards, not forward"? ( and yes, revealing state secrets, even if done for the good of the public as whistleblowers do, is still illegal. )
Why doesn't Obama's dictate that we "Look Forward, Not Backward," protect this NSA whistle-blower from prosecution at least as much as the high-level Bush officials who criminally spied on American citizens? Isn't the DOJ's prosecution of Drake the classic case of "Looking Backward," by digging into Bush-era crimes, controversies and disclosures?
salon.com
Bold text added by the diarist
So prosecuting a Bush/Cheney era whistleblower who uncovered waste and incompetence is important enough to "Look backwards on", but not the lies and war crimes that lead us to war in Iraq based on evidence derived from illegal torture?
And what effect will this move by the Obama DoJ have?
As Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Presss, told the NYT today: "The whole point of the prosecution is to have a chilling effect on reporters and sources, and it will."
salon.com
When the Bush/Cheney administration came down on whistleblowers the left was outraged and loud about it. But now, almost total silence.
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