If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by Bush

Friday, February 6, 2009

Former Bush aides are having a field day criticizing everything about the Obama administration, and he hasn't even been in office for a month yet. I'm not entirely sure what their strategy is — maybe they think they are still relevant?

Dick Cheney says President Obama's policies will make it easier for terrorists to kill Americans. Alberto Gonzales says the new attorney general could be undermining the morale of U.S. intelligence officials.

And Andrew Card, George W. Bush's first chief of staff, took Obama to task for allowing shirtsleeves and loose collars in the Oval Office -- arguing it was a clear departure from Bush's sterner sartorial rules.

... "It's certainly unbecoming, especially for a former vice president," Thomas E. Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said in reference to the remarks by Cheney and others. "It reinforces the fact that there's a lot of bitterness about the low public standing of Bush and the administration as they left office, and the soaring standing of Barack Obama. A lot of these people are still caught up in these ideological battles and can't let go."

Brian Darling, the Senate relations director for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the criticism "is part of democracy and the free exchange of ideas."

Except when Bush was in office, when such criticism was called "treason" and "anti-American" and "supporting terrorists."

The remarks by Card, meanwhile, also suggest that no issue is too small to escape notice. Obama has attracted attention for ditching his suitcoat while in the Oval Office and letting others do the same. Although Bush did on occasion work in his shirtsleeves, he generally enforced a more formal dress code for the presidential office.

"I'm disappointed to see the casual, laissez faire, short sleeves, no shirt and tie, no jacket, kind of locker-room experience that seems to be taking place in this White House and the Oval Office," Card told talk show host Michael Medved last week. He did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

I wonder if he was disappointed to see male prostitutes roaming around the West Wing during the reign of the previous occupant? Talk about a locker room experience.

F'ing hypocrites. I really thought that I'd have to turn my attention to corrupt, hypocritical Democrats once Bush was gone, but it seems that the Bush era is the gift that keeps on giving long after it should have twitched its last.

---