The June 6 Washington Post has a story about whether or not Bush will pardon the convicted Scooter Libby. Some think it would be too politically damaging for him, but others are not so sure, sez the Post:
"At the same time, some White House advisers said the president's political troubles are already so deep that a pardon might not be so damaging. Those most upset by the CIA leak case that led to the Libby conviction already oppose Bush, they noted. 'You can't hang a man twice for the same crime,' a Republican close to the White House said."
If I'm Bush, I go ahead and pardon the guy. After all, I can, and who cares what the country thinks?
The '08 campaign is off and running, and Bush is now a joke in the nation's rear view mirror, including among the Republican candidates trying to succeed him. He has always done what he wants, and now that his ratings are in the toilet he's even more free.
My own mother sees in him a willful personality, a characteristic associated with delinquency that suggests one never grew up emotionally. Statements like "I'm the Commander Guy" make this painfully clear.
But adults don't do something just because we can (like suddenly groping the neck -- uninvited -- of the female German Chancellor at an international summit). We do something because it's the right thing to do. Willfulness toward others is juvenile behavior, something that most adults gracefully surrender. Not Bush.
Poppy Bush didn't, either. Remember this quote from 1990: "I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli."
"The decider," indeed.
I remember a solo Bush press conference soon after the Baker/Hamilton Commission released its report that was critical of the Bush Iraq policy. He was openly defensive, alternately referring to the lead co-chair of the commission as "Jimmy," and then by his last name, "Baker." It was "Jimmy" this and "Baker" that. He was behaving like a child who'd been told to eat his broccoli, and he couldn't hide it.
The recent Iraq Commission was yet another effort by Baker to lure W in off the ledge, but the president who ascended the office thanks to the Supreme Court (a first) was making it clear at the press conference that he didn't have to come in if he didn't want to. James Baker, of course, is a man who very much stands on ceremony and protocol. He's the height of formality by his nature. After all, he was Secretary of State under W's father.
So he's Shrub's elder, by a long shot. And he's pulled W out of the fire on behalf of the Bush family many times before, all the way back to when he got a lifelong college buddy from Princeton to buy into 35 year-old W's failing oil company Arbusto in the early 80's.
I don't have to mention Baker's work on behalf of the Bush clan in Florida 2000, do I?
Calling James Baker "Jimmy" and then "Baker" was the act of a willful, juvenile man. Even if he calls him "Jim" privately, his use of those overly casual terms in such a serious and public setting is inappropriate, and you can bet dollars to pesos that "Jimmy" didn't care for it.
Bush, announcing a major international initiative, once referred to his Secretary of State as "Condi," as in "I'm gonna be sending Condi over to such-and-such next week." It's like he was sending his own personal Hazel the maid or something. It was improper, yet indicative. He should have said, "I'll be sending Secretary of State Rice to visit with so and so..." And by the way, he did use formal titles in reference to the foreign leaders he was sending her to meet.
I learned this lesson the hard way when I called then-Texas Democratic Party Chairman Bob Slagle -- my elder -- "Bobby" to his face one night at the Driskill Hotel in Austin. I felt full of myself, said it just because I could. I was wrong, and he went nose to nose with me over it. I learned a lesson. I was 30 years old, and it was high time I got that lesson. Bush never did, and for him being President means never having to say you're sorry.
Ah, but "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked" as the Bard once sang.
Or perhaps the Paul Simon lyric is a better fit:
"And if I was the President
The minute the congress called my name
I'd say now who do you think you're foolin'
I've got the presidential seal
I'm up on the presidential podium
My mama loves me
She loves me
She get down on her knees and hug me
Oh she loves me like a rock
She rocks me like the rock of ages
And loves me"
Bush's mama should have taken a hickory switch to him instead.