Tag Archives: George HW Bush

national news, political news, State news

Bushes 41 and 43 to remain silent

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At one level this bit of news isn’t much of a surprise.

At another level, though, it’s still a big deal.

Two former Republican presidents — George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — are going to keep their thoughts to themselves regarding the upcoming presidential campaign.

They have no plans to endorse the presumptive GOP nominee Donald J. Trump.

This is more or less in line with what these two men have pledged to do since leaving office. Bush 41 left the White House in 1993 and took, in effect, a vow of political silence. Bush 43 made his exit in 2009 and more or less did the same thing. Neither of them has spoken much about public policy issues or engaged fully in discussions about them.

Both men stepped back into the arena briefly this election cycle to campaign for Jeb Bush. It didn’t work for the younger Bush, who dropped out several months ago.

Why is this a big deal? Why does it matter?

To my mind, it matters because the name “Bush” exemplifies traditional Republican politics. For both men now to say they won’t publicly state their support for — or endorse — Trump speaks volumes.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/04/bush-41-43-have-no-plans-endorse-trump/

Their silence deprives Trump of a statement of support from two former presidents who between them served 12 years in the nation’s highest office.

The elder Bush, as I’ve said before, entered the White House as arguably the single most qualified man ever to assume the presidency. The younger Bush took office in 2001 and just nine months later was thrust into the role of wartime president when the terrorists flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

What these men think about the state of the current campaign matters.

Indeed, the elder Bush in the past has thrown his support publicly behind GOP nominees. That includes one-time rival Bob Dole in 1996. He, of course, backed George W. in 2000 and 2004, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

This year? He’s going to remain mum.

The Bush men’s silence in 2016 perhaps means more than either of them is going to acknowledge.

national news, political news

Bernie turns from nice to nasty

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Bernie Sanders once vowed never to speak ill of his chief rival for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

He said he wanted to stay on the high road. He barely mentioned her by name while stumping across places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

That was then. Today he went straight after Hillary Clinton, contending in New York that the former secretary of state, U.S. senator — from New York! — and first lady isn’t “qualified” to become the 45th president of the United States.

Why is Clinton now unqualified to hold the nation’s highest office? According to the Vermont independent-turned-Democratic senator, her acceptance of money from “big Wall Street banks and other establishment political action groups makes her no longer qualified.

Hmm. That’s an interesting accusation.

You see, from my perspective, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most qualified candidate — among the five people in either party still seeking the presidency — to become the next president.

She served several terms as first lady as Arkansas; she became first lady of the nation for two terms and had a profound influence on her husband’s rather successful presidency; she was elected twice to the U.S. Senate from New York; she served as secretary of state during President Obama’s first term.

Surely, there have been other candidates over the years who’ve brought more sparkling resumes to the Oval Office. I keep thinking that of the presidents who served in my lifetime, the one with the glossiest history was George H.W. Bush. World War II fighter pilot, CIA director, member of Congress, U.N. ambassador, Republican Party chairman, vice president? The man had chops to be president.

As for Sanders’ own qualifications, well, he’s marginally so.

But the tone of this Democratic primary campaign has changed dramatically.

Now the nation is paying attention.

That’s the way it goes. Negativity works.

 

medical news, national news, political news, religious news

Abortion tempest erupts

 

Chalkboard - Abortion

Donald J. Trump finds himself in the middle of a tempest over arguably the most contentious political issue ever.

Again!

The Republican Party presidential primary frontrunner said Wednesday — in response to some aggressive questioning by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews — that a woman should face “some punishment” were she to obtain an illegal abortion.

Yep. He said that. A woman should be punished.

Then the firestorm erupted. What in the world is he talking about?

Republican candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich were quick to condemn Trump’s statement. Then came the fury from Democratic candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Within a couple of hours, Trump issued a statement that said the doctor should face the sanction, not the woman whose pregnancy was ended.

I won’t bother you with a dissertation on my own views of abortion, as you perhaps already know I remain pro-choice on the issue.

What is bothersome about Trump’s answer and then his recanting of his initial response is the non-preparedness the candidate keeps exhibiting when pressed for answers on these critical issues.

Abortion matters deeply to many millions of Americans. It seems, to me at least, that few of us have mild feelings about the issue. We’re either fervently pro-choice or pro-life. Trump’s view on the issue has evolved over time. He is seen on videotape telling an interviewer about a decade ago that he is “strongly pro-choice.” Then he told Matthews this week that he is “pro-life.”

I’d be curious to know what changed Trump’s view on this issue. How did he go from one firm position to another? Perhaps the only other major-party politician I can recall pulling such a dramatic switcheroo would be George H.W. Bush, who abandoned his pro-choice views immediately upon accepting Ronald Reagan’s invitation to join him on the GOP presidential ticket in 1980.

Donald Trump initial answer to the question of whether a woman should face punishment reveals what Sen. Cruz identified correctly as Trump’s utter lack of preparation to discuss these issues when confronted with them.

Somehow, though, I cannot escape the feeling that Trump will find a way to deny he ever said what millions of Americans already heard him say.

Most disturbing of all will be that many Americans will believe him.

 

legal news, national news, political news

Act on the president’s court nominee

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I remain strongly in support of presidential prerogative.

It’s been one of my core beliefs ever since I started thinking seriously about policy, politics and government.

When I read stories over the past few days about how Senate Republicans plan to block President Obama’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court — before even knowing who it is — it sends me into deep orbit.

The GOP is digging in. So is the White House.

In my view, the president’s constitutional authority should override the Senate’s role in this decision.

I’ll reiterate here something I hope hasn’t been lost on those who read this blog. My belief in presidential prerogative crosses party lines. This isn’t a partisan issue with me.

In 1991, Republican President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the high court to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall. I stood behind the president on that pick while working for a newspaper in Beaumont. Did the president overstate Thomas’s qualifications for the court by calling the “most qualified man” he could find? Yes, he did.

But that was his call to make. George H.W. Bush was our president, who had been elected decisively in 1988. He earned the right to select someone with whom he felt comfortable. As for the allegations of sexual harassment that arose late in the confirmation process, well, I didn’t buy entirely into what was being alleged.

Four years earlier, President Ronald Reagan selected Robert Bork to the court. Was he the kind of jurist I would have picked? Heavens no! But that wasn’t my call to make. It belonged to the president. The Senate saw it differently and rejected Bork’s nomination to the court — despite Bork’s well-known brilliance and knowledge of constitutional law — on grounds that he would fundamentally reshape the direction of the Constitution.

The process worked as it was intended, even though I believed then as well in the principle of presidential prerogative.

Barack Obama is equally entitled — just as any of his predecessors have been — to put someone forward to sit on the nation’s highest judicial authority. The death of conservative icon Antonin Scalia has shocked us all. The court won’t stop functioning with only eight justices.

The larger problem, though, might lie in the Senate, where Democrats are vowing revenge if Republicans follow through with their threat to block the president’s court nominee from even getting a hearing.

The Senate could shut down. Government could stop. The upper congressional chamber could become a logjam of legislation approved by the House, which cannot become law over a dispute that Senate Republicans will have started.

For what purpose? To deny the president of the “other party” a chance to fulfill his constitutional duty, to which a majority of Americans entrusted to him twice with their votes.

Republicans want to wait for the next president to take office. They are gambling that the 45th president will be one of their own. It’s a risky gamble, though, that threatens to stymie everything else that their own constituents elected them to do — which is to govern.

International news, legal news, national news, political news

Reagan and Bush did it; why not Obama?

Republicans in Congress are getting loaded for bear if that Democratic rascal in the White House follows through with a threat to execute an order that delays deportation of some 5 million illegal immigrants.

What they’ll do precisely in response to a now-expected executive order remains unclear.

Maybe they should follow the congressional led set when two earlier presidents did precisely the same thing, using exactly the same constitutional device.

That would be: nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/15/reagan-bush-immigration-deportation_n_6164068.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

At issue is whether President Obama will use his executive authority to delay those deportations and, by the way, strengthen security along our southern border. Congress wants him to wait. So do I, for that matter. Congressional Republicans are threatening to hamstring confirmation hearings on the president’s pick to be attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Heck, they might even sue the president.

The most troublesome — and ridiculous — notion being field tested in the court of public opinion is impeachment.

Let’s look briefly at history.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did the same thing. One heard nary a peep out of Congress, let alone the Democrats who controlled the place at the time.

Congress enacted an immigration law in 1986, but in the following year, President Reagan gave immigration officials the power to cover the children of illegal immigrants who were granted amnesty under the law. As the Huffington Post reported: “Spouses and children of couples in which one parent qualified for amnesty but the other did not remained subject to deportation, leading to efforts to amend the 1986 law.”

Along came President Bush in 1989. The Huffington Post reports: “In a parallel to today, the Senate acted in 1989 to broaden legal status to families but the House never took up the bill. Through the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Bush advanced a new ‘family fairness’ policy that put in place the Senate measure. Congress passed the policy into law by the end of the year as part of broader immigration legislation. ‘It’s a striking parallel,’ said Mark Noferi of the pro-immigration American Immigration Council. ‘Bush Sr. went big at the time. He protected about 40 percent of the unauthorized population. Back then that was up to 1.5 million. Today that would be about 5 million.'”

What gives with the current crop of yahoos calling the shots on Capitol Hill?

Oh, I forgot. The tea party/nimrod wing of the GOP vows to shake things up and no longer do things the way they’ve been done in the past.

That must include allowing the president of the United States to actually lead.

 

International news

The Wall came tumblin' down

Walls were meant to be broken, scaled, breached.

Thus, when the Berlin Wall came crashing down a quarter-century ago today, it signaled an inevitable result.

The communists who ruled East Germany at the time built the wall in 1961 to keep people in, not necessarily to keep people out. Their strategy never really worked. People fought to break through the wall to find freedom in West Berlin, which still was surrounded by the rest of the communist country. Still, the people fled, often dying in the effort.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2014/nov/03/the-berlin-wall-in-the-cold-war-and-now-interactive

The Wall is history now. It came down. Berlin would be united. Germany would unite as well.

The Soviet Union? It hung on for two more years before it, too, disintegrated into oblivion.

One element about all of that stands out for me as I look back at that tumultuous time.

The president of the United States at the time didn’t do a touchdown dance. He didn’t crow aloud about how great we are and how evil the communists were. George H.W. Bush wasn’t one to spike the ball, as it were, in a moment of supreme triumph.

His immediate predecessor, Ronald Reagan — whom Bush served as vice president for eight years — didn’t do any shouting from the rooftop either. Both men, to their credit, chose to let the events play out, to allow the people to celebrate their freedom and for the world to draw its own conclusions about what was occurring in a great European city.

It’s helpful, though, to recall the abject failure of the wall. It symbolized only the tyranny of those who erected it and served to remind those who sought freedom of their own desire to breach the wall.

They succeeded. Good for them. Good for the rest of the world as well.

Uncategorized

‘Regime change’ is hidden strategy

The columnist Charles Krauthammer says any attack on Syria would be a “pointless exercise” if it’s not about “regime change.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/08/27/krauthammer_pointless_exercise_if_attack_on_syria_isnt_about_regime_change.html

White House press guru Jay Carney says regime change isn’t on the agenda if U.S. forces attack Syrian military installations in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians.

It’s all very interesting. Let me walk us back 20-plus years.

In August 1990, the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein sent troops into Kuwait to invade and occupy that country. He took Kuwait’s vast oil supply hostage, threatening to cut off supply lines to countries such as the United States.

President George H.W. Bush said immediately the invasion “will not stand.” So he put together a coalition of nations, obtained United Nations approval to strike back at Iraq, then got the Congress to go along with it. The president stated over and over that the aim of any planned response would be to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait and nothing more.

A force of more than 500,000 troops, commanded by U.S. Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, stood ready to attack.

Then came the first shot of the war, on Jan. 17, 1991. It was a Tomahawk cruise missile launched by the battleship USS Wisconsin. Where did this missile score a direct hit? On the presidential palace in Baghdad.

Had the missile strike killed Saddam Hussein, there would have been a regime change, correct?

No one should be surprised, therefore, if an attack on Syria doesn’t start with a similar targeting strategy.

Uncategorized

Clinton vs. Christie in 2016

I know it’s early. I shouldn’t even be thinking like this. But I’m starting to lick my chops at the prospect of a 2016 presidential campaign between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chris Christie.

Neither of them has declared their intention to run, although both are beginning to act ever so slightly as though they’re interested in seeking their party’s nomination. Clinton already has run once for the Democratic nomination. Christie has been the Republican governor of New Jersey for three years.

Both are dynamic presences within their own key constituencies. They’re fierce defenders of their records. They’re politically savvy.

Why Clinton?

She might have the most comprehensive resume for the job since, perhaps, George H.W. Bush. Former first lady, former U.S. senator from New York, former secretary of state. Prior to all of that, she was Arkansas’s first lady and at one time was an accomplished lawyer. She’s been close to the center of power, given her marriage to one Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States.

Some pundits have compared her White House inevitability with that of General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, who was deemed unbeatable during the 1952 presidential campaign. Turns out they were right about Ike.

Why Christie?

He is a no-nonsense guy. Christie is unafraid of the ideologues within his own party. He rolls up his sleeves and works for New Jersey. My favorite moment of the 2012 political season occurred when a Fox News Channel talking head, Steve Doocy, asked Christie if GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would visit the Jersey Shore, which had been battered by Hurricane Sandy … on the heels of President Obama’s tour of the destruction. Christie’s response, in effect, was: I don’t give a damn whether he comes here or stays away; I’ve got a job to do. He added that he wasn’t the least bit interested in how it might affect the presidential campaign.

I ought not to engage in this kind of speculation. I’m doing it anyway with the hope that it comes to pass.