As Bush 41 jumps from a plane to celebrate his 85th birthday, Jimmy Carter, a few months younger, parachutes into the Middle East with his own foreign policy for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and now Bush 43 is getting into the look-at-me act.
"Just because you're an old guy, you don't have to sit around drooling in the corner," the elder Bush said after landing safely in Kennebunkport last week. "Get out and do something. Get out and enjoy life."
Such fatherly advice may have inspired George W., who is now out drooling in public about his successor's efforts to fix an economy that fell apart on his watch.
"I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in," he tells applauding Pennsylvania business people. "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money."
The acrobatic aspect of W's act is to hammer Obama's policies while bending over backward to maintain a vow not to criticize his successor.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Jimmy Carter is plunging full steam ahead in the china shop, bashing Israel and meeting with Hamas leaders (while escaping a reported plot of theirs to kill him), with a reprise of his White House boobery that failed three decades ago to free American hostages in Iran or stop Castro from exporting criminals and mental cases to Florida with the Mariel boatlift.
During the transition earlier this year, Barack Obama kept repeating a mantra of "one president at a time," a prudent approach as well for those whose 15 minutes of fame has expired.
Bush 41's geriatric parachuting may only make his Secret Service detail a little jumpy, but Bush 43 and Carter have the potential to be seriously annoying with their antics in the Ex-Presidents' Flying Circus.
Showing posts with label Bush 41. Bush 43. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush 41. Bush 43. Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Panetta, the Bushes and Spying
If and when he is confirmed, Leon Panetta will be running the CIA from the Headquarters Compound in Langley, Virginia, the George H.W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence.
For those who have been fueling an uproar over the proposed new Director's lack of experience in the spook profession, the naming of the CIA's head office may offer some perspective.
In 1998, urging the House of Representatives to approve it, Rep. Porter Goss of Florida said, "Bush demonstrated leadership and trustworthiness at a time when both were desperately needed to help restore confidence in the Central Intelligence Agency and the other intelligence agencies that make up our intelligence community."
The bill was passed with bipartisan enthusiasm, naming the headquarters for a director who had served barely a year and had come to the position with no background in intelligence.
For those who are complaining about Panetta, the story gets worse. Goss, who had been recruited into the CIA in his junior year at Yale and labored in the clandestine services for a decade before being elected to Congress and serving on the House Intelligence Committee, was himself appointed CIA director in 2004 by Bush II and forced out two years later after a rocky tenure.
He left amid what the Los Angeles Times called "distracting battles over bureaucratic turf" and "sinking morale in the spy ranks," described as "another CIA director, his reputation battered, heading for the door with a long list of unfinished tasks."
Barack Obama is apparently hoping for another inexperienced Bush I to straighten out the agency rather than a veteran of the intelligence community to prolong its internecine wars. Congressional Democrats who object to that will have to make the case that his instincts are wrong.
For those who have been fueling an uproar over the proposed new Director's lack of experience in the spook profession, the naming of the CIA's head office may offer some perspective.
In 1998, urging the House of Representatives to approve it, Rep. Porter Goss of Florida said, "Bush demonstrated leadership and trustworthiness at a time when both were desperately needed to help restore confidence in the Central Intelligence Agency and the other intelligence agencies that make up our intelligence community."
The bill was passed with bipartisan enthusiasm, naming the headquarters for a director who had served barely a year and had come to the position with no background in intelligence.
For those who are complaining about Panetta, the story gets worse. Goss, who had been recruited into the CIA in his junior year at Yale and labored in the clandestine services for a decade before being elected to Congress and serving on the House Intelligence Committee, was himself appointed CIA director in 2004 by Bush II and forced out two years later after a rocky tenure.
He left amid what the Los Angeles Times called "distracting battles over bureaucratic turf" and "sinking morale in the spy ranks," described as "another CIA director, his reputation battered, heading for the door with a long list of unfinished tasks."
Barack Obama is apparently hoping for another inexperienced Bush I to straighten out the agency rather than a veteran of the intelligence community to prolong its internecine wars. Congressional Democrats who object to that will have to make the case that his instincts are wrong.
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