I don’t know how I can make it any clearer that we cannot merely censure the President. It isn’t about revenge or the rule of law or lawbreaking. It’s about the absolute necessity of removing him as commander in chief. I mean, let’s get serious.
Democrats in Congress left a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday frustrated over what they perceived as his reluctance to embrace major recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.
Democrats stressed to Bush in separate meetings the dire need for the administration to revamp its Iraq policy, but they don’t expect him to embrace all 79 recommendations made this week by the panel, which was chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.
Bush said he talked about “the need for a new way forward in Iraq” in his morning session with leaders from both parties and chambers of Congress, “and we talked about the need to work together on this important subject.”
But some Democrats came away unconvinced that major changes were coming.
“I just didn’t feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically,” Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev., said following the Oval Office meeting. “He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes.”
Instead, Bush began his talk by comparing himself to President Harry S Truman, who launched the Truman Doctrine to fight communism, got bogged down in the Korean War and left office unpopular.
Bush said that “in years to come they realized he was right and then his doctrine became the standard for America,” recalled Senate Majority Whip-elect Richard Durbin, D-Ill. “He’s trying to position himself in history and to justify those who continue to stand by him, saying sometimes if you’re right you’re unpopular, and be prepared for criticism.”
Durbin said he challenged Bush’s analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that’s what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now – work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.
Bush, Durbin said, “reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response” and emphasized that he is “the commander in chief.”
Not for long. Not if is this is how he is going to respond to Baker-Hamilton. The grown-ups have spoken.