Bush Can't Be Mourner-In-Chief

Time via FrontPageMagazine ^ | 12/02/03 | Charles Krauthammer

[kattracks]

President Bush's secret visit to Baghdad dramatized his commitment to the war and the troops. But it has not put to rest criticism that he has been unwilling to pay the proper respect to those who fought and died. "It's absolutely appropriate to be honoring our soldiers overseas in battle on a day like Thanksgiving," said Chris Lehane, a top adviser to presidential candidate Wesley Clark. But that's not sufficient. "It is more important to honor them every day," including "to appropriately honor the heroes coming back in caskets."

As dead American soldiers have come back from Iraq, Bush has been heavily criticized for not attending a single funeral and not once going to Dover Air Force Base to receive the coffins. One columnist wrote acidly that Bush has time to go around the country to do fund raisers but no time to receive the dead, cynically keeping election-season distance from the terrible consequences of his Iraq policy

[Cannoneer No. 4]

All the Bush-haters who want The President to spend all his time at Dover biting his lip want the same thing Saddam and UBL want: Bush gone and America defeated.

More and more DemocRATS tread perilously closer to sedition every day.

[Fledermaus]

This is bunk. Nothing but liberal talking points for the DNC. It's already been debunked over that last 40 years.

LBJ only went to TWO funerals and those of children of his friends are a White House staff member.

Carter went to NO funerals. Only a "memorial" service for those killed in the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran.

Clinton never went to ONE funeral, only services with a large audience. Hillary has gone to no funerals for victims of 9/11 in New York.

Bush meets with the families on occasion as most Presidents do. But the actual attending of funerals is something a President doesn't do. Not even FDR or Truman did.

And the idea that is horrible that we can't see flag draped coffins coming off a plane at Dover is sick...just plain sick. It's an OBVIOUS political move for the press and they should be ashamed. But shame isn't something the Dems understand.

And the policy of not allowing the media at the movement of our brave dead is another tradition. Clinton never did it. We saw nothing about dead troops coming back from Haiti, Bosnia or even those who died by accident in Kosovo.

Shame on all the left for this crap. I wish them all an eternity in pure hell.

[lainde]

bttt

[mass55th]

Lehane's working for Clark now? I hadn't realized that Wesley had settled on Kerry's sloppy seconds.

[R. Scott]

Politics as usual - gearing up for 2004.

[Mr. Bird]

The last thing a grieving family needs is the circus of a president attending the funeral. We're talking hundreds of people, advance security detail, the press, etc.

[anoldafvet]

He worked for Algore before Kerry.

[wtc911]

The POTUS can't go to the funerals for two very significant reasons;

What funeral does he decide NOT to attend? How does the family of that soldier react?

If the war intensifies, which could easily happen over the next few years, the political downside of having to say..."I have to stop, there are too many"...is too much to risk.

Finally...the institution of the presidency has long acknowledged this. That is why the POTUS lays a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier every 11/11.

[Redleg Duke]

I just finished Bernard Goldberg's first book, "Bias", and it puts the press activities in perspective. They are all sick puppies. They are not like main stream America at all. Never have been, never will be.

The term "Media Whores" is accurate, but it gives "Working Women" a bad name!

[ravingnutter]

***Sigh***...someone's not doing thier homework...

"He never wants to elevate or diminish one sacrifice made over another," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.

Or, as another White House official put it: "If you're the brother or mother of a soldier who was killed on Saturday, and nothing was said, and then the president says something on Sunday? Unless the president starts saying it for all of them, he can't do it."

So, for now, Bush is continuing to refer as generically as possible to the sacrifice of all, as he did when reporters asked him on Tuesday in California to comment directly on the helicopter attack. "I am saddened any time that there's a loss of life," Bush replied, then added that the soldiers had died "for a cause greater than themselves," which he said was the campaign against terrorism.

Bartlett would not discuss how much concern comments like Wilson's had created at the White House. "The president writes a letter to every family of a fallen soldier, and meets privately with families of soldiers at military bases," Bartlett said. "He grieves with them, he understands. I'm not going to judge anybody's comments made in such a difficult period. People say a lot of things."

People close to the president say that another reason Bush has not been more willing to express more public sympathy for individual soldiers killed in Iraq is his determination to let families have their privacy. Bush was offended, his friends say, about what he saw at times as President Bill Clinton's exploitation of the public's grief for political gain.

Source

[mass55th]

"He worked for Algore before Kerry."

Yeah, he's the one who leaked the DWI info on Bush just before the election in 2000. So Kerry got the sloppy seconds and Wes is getting turdy thirds. Or if you're from the Bronx: Toidy Toids

[Fledermaus]

They are only "mainstream" in the fact they define the term!