TheStar.com – O’Neill backtracks on Bush broadside TIM HARPER

The book [The Price of Loyalty, by Ron Suskind] is replete with stories of a president who appeared zoned out at meetings and said he operated on ”instinct” and ”gut,” not briefing books.

In the book, O’Neill laments the fact that as a 65-year-old man he had to be given a nickname, a Bush habit.

The president immediately began calling him “Pablo.” Later he started calling his treasury secretary “Big O.”

He said Bush called Secretary of State Colin Powell “Balloonfoot.” …

[I]n an interview to be published in Rolling Stone magazine, Dean — without specifically mentioning the war in Iraq — said Bush had some type of obsessive need to please his father, who allowed Saddam to remain in power after the 1991 Gulf war and lost his bid for re-election.

“This president is not interested in being a good president,” the former Vermont governor said. “He’s interested in some complicated psychological situation that he has with his father.

“He is obsessed with being re-elected, and his obsession with re-election is hurting the country.”

In the 60 Minutes interview, O’Neill said Bush’s habit of giving nicknames was indicative of his bully-nature, while most suggest it’s because he’s not too bright; both are probably true.

Note that Suskind wrote for the Wall Street Journal, which is for conservatives what they think the New York Times is for liberals. Now the WSJ is trying to discredit Suskind as a “well-known Bush antagonist.” mjh

Kennedy: Bush Broke Faith with Americans on Iraq By Vicki Allen, Reuters

[Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts] said the administration ”has broken faith with the American people, aided and abetted by a congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price, even the price of distorting the truth.”

He also said the Iraq war has made the effort to stop terrorism more difficult. ”We knocked al Qaeda down in the war in Afghanistan, but we let it regroup by going to war in Iraq,” he said of Osama bin Laden’s network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. …

“War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. It was a product they were methodically rolling out,” he said.

Kennedy branded the administration as “breathtakingly arrogant,” convinced “they know what is in America’s interest, but they refuse to debate it honestly.”

Interactive Electoral Votes Map found via Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation., which was linked from Babes Against Bush!, which Jas. discovered.

Cool election day countdown clock from www.babesagainstbush.com:

And my own countdown calendar:
Dump Bush — 2004 Election Countdown

Clark: Bush more concerned with ‘political security’ than national security TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Tuesday criticized the timing of an investigation of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and suggested President Bush was more concerned with ”political security” than national security.

Campaigning in New Hampshire two weeks before its primary election, Clark called for a full congressional investigation into why the United States went to war in Iraq.

“We don’t know what the motivation was. We just don’t know. We’ve spent $180 billion on it, we’ve lost 480 Americans, we’ve got 2,500 with life-changing injuries,” the retired general told reporters. …

Clark contrasted the speed of the O’Neill investigation with the slow pace of an inquiry into who last summer divulged the name of a CIA official whose husband had criticized the president’s Iraq policy.

“They didn’t wait 24 hours in initiating an investigation on Paul O’Neill,” Clark said. “They’re not concerned about national security. But they’re really concerned about political security. I think they’ve got their priorities upside down.“

Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They say that his officials weren’t sincere about pledges to balance the budget. They say that the planning for an invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism.

But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the halls of the Army War College. …

The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean’s assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn’t made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a “detour” that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O’Neill’s revelations? …

More important, having a few months of good news doesn’t excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.

Challenging Bush: A Journey From a Mill Town Ends With a Run for President By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., NYTimes

Senator Edwards’s campaign for president, which won the coveted endorsement of The Des Moines Register yesterday, hinges on the notion that he has not forgotten where he comes from. He usually arrives at his events to the blaring sound of John Cougar Mellencamp singing “I was born in a small town.” And it never takes him long to tell his audience he was reared by working-class parents in mill towns of the Carolinas and was the first in his family to go to college.

Op-Ed Contributor: The Vital Republican Center By CHRISTIE WHITMAN

Now … many moderate Republicans feel even less certain of their place in the party. When President Bush, arguably one of the more conservative presidents in recent history, is under attack from the right wing of the party for his proposal regarding immigration and migrant workers, is it any wonder moderates feel out of sync?
It doesn’t seem to matter to conservatives that moderates share their views on the vast majority of those bedrock principles that have always been the foundation of Republicanism: smaller government, the power of free markets, a strong national defense. Because we disagree on a few issues, most notably a woman’s right to choose, many conservatives act as if they wish we moderates would just disappear. …

I also often had to battle extremists within my own party. I remember a Republican leader in Congress telling me not to use the word “balance” when talking about environmental policy — it implied that we were giving too much away to the environmentalists. Moderate voters who are concerned about the environment were often left frustrated.

Former New Jersey governor and EPA head, Christie Whitman is writing about the trouble moderate Republicans have getting acceptance from the Radical Right (whom she incorrectly identifies as conservatives). Tell us about it, Christie. mjh

See also: Conservatives Against Bush
GOP Wins the Hypocrisy Trophy