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It's not all about Barack Saturday, May 17, 2008 By John Brummett I'd like to say a word in defense of George W. Bush and against Barack Obama.<br/><br/>Yes, you read correctly, and, no, the world has not turned upside down, so far as I know.<br/><br/>Bush was in Jerusalem on Thursday speaking to the Israeli parliament. There he got wound up about those who think they can reason with terrorists. He wended his way to the fateful point of invoking Nazi appeasement.<br/><br/>"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said in prepared remarks. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."<br/><br/>Regardless of whether you think Bush was over the top in the metaphor, as I'm always inclined to think about Hitler comparisons, it should be clear to anyone that his critical reference was general and that, if intended at all specifically, surely was directed at former President Jimmy Carter. <br/><br/>You will recall that the fiercely independent Carter recently met with officials of Hamas, a militant and historically terrorist and anti-Israel group that now controls the Gaza Strip.<br/><br/>But Obama, learning of the president's comment to the Israeli Knesset, professed personal outrage that the president had gone to Israel and used an international stage to make a partisan political criticism against him. <br/><br/>Obama has said he would meet without pre-conditions with national leaders who seem to hate us, like those of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and so forth. He has said he would not meet, though, with leaders of terrorist groups, and, in fact, criticized Carter's action.<br/><br/>U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, got so offended in Obama's behalf that he told reporters Bush was spreading "bull...." on a foreign stage and that it was Bush, not anyone else, who had effectively strengthened the hand of terrorists who hate us.<br/><br/>Bush's press spokesman, Dana Perino, said Bush was merely restating long-standing beliefs. She said Bush wasn't singling anybody out, not even Carter. Of Obama's taking offense, she said she understood that a person running for president perhaps thinks the world revolves around him, but that was not the case.<br/><br/>She got it absolutely right. In fact, I rather suspect Obama and his brain trust knew full well that Bush wasn't meaning to talk about them, but they opted to exploit the comment anyway.<br/><br/>You see, it accrues to Obama's political benefit if he is seen as the American antithesis of a president of the opposing party who carries an approval rating of 30 percent. It engenders a proprietary defense of Obama in his own party and it signals to swing voters that he stands in stark contrast to an incumbent of whom they are weary.<br/><br/>To counter the pesky Hillary Clinton, Obama wants to be seen as the inevitable and presumptive nominee. It advances that perception to pretend the incumbent president of the opposite party had attacked him in Jerusalem. And it can be parlayed into a general election campaign against what some pundits have taken to calling "McBush," meaning a morphing of George W. Bush and John McCain.<br/><br/>But Bush was just being Bush, if, in these particular remarks, not as off-the-mark as usual.<br/><br/><br/><br/>-------<br/><br/>John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/> |
