Hell has frozen over.
I am about to agree with something Karl Rove has said, which is that President Obama needs to take care when referencing his work as a U.S. senator on behalf of veterans.
Barack Obama served for three years on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. He was critical of the Bush administration’s treatment of veterans. However, according to Rove — aka “Bush’s brain” — Sen. Obama often was a no-show at committee meetings when veterans health care issues came up.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/karl-rove-senator-obama-veterans-affairs-107033.html?hp=r7
Other senators have noted the same thing about Sen. Obama, who reportedly had his eye on a bigger prize almost the moment he won the Senate seat in a landslide over transplanted Republican ultraconservative candidate Alan Keyes.
Veterans health care is in the news, of course. A scandal has erupted over the deaths of about 40 veterans who waited far too long for health care at the Phoenix, Ariz., VA hospital. There’s also the issue of cooked-up records showing patients were getting care in a timely manner. Vets Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki is on the griddle over it, but so far President Obama is standing behind the embattled Cabinet member.
Back to Rove’s point.
The president is right to make veterans health care a major issue. He is right to be angry; a lot of us out here are angry — and scared — as well. The president is correct to demand answers and corrective measures. Heads ought to roll once the evidence is in and Shinseki should resign if it turns out he was negligent.
President Obama, though, is learning a terrible lesson in how politicians cannot shake their own personal history when issues come in direct conflict with their record.
Rove misfired badly in suggesting Hillary Rodham Clinton may have suffered a “brain injury” when she fell in 2012. He has found the mark, though, in questioning much of the president’s demonstrated commitment to veterans health care issues, given his spotty attendance at Senate hearings.
There. That is likely to be last time I’ll say something supportive about Karl Rove for a long while.