Does the White House support our troops? Well, no.
The backlog of disability claims stands at more than 405,000, with cases averaging 177 days to be processed — almost twice the backlog for civilians. Experts estimate that an additional 400,000 claims will be filed in the next two years.
...The administration has failed in more than its battle strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. While talking a lot about supporting the troops and using them shamelessly in Congressional battles and election years, the administration has systematically shortchanged the wounded and maimed who make it back from harm’s way. ...While talking a lot about supporting the troops and using them shamelessly in Congressional battles and election years, the administration has systematically shortchanged the wounded and maimed who make it back from harm’s way.
The Bush administration will be in trouble with Americans for years and decades for its casual lies and the inhumanity toward those it sends into war.
It may even be remembered more for its arrogant secrecy. To achieve this autocratic secrecy it has had no better weapon than Dick Cheney. He has, the New York Times argues, "privatized the presidency" -- right down to his pay package.
From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received “deferred salary payments” from Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him. Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited handsomely from the war in Iraq.
Reviewing this record — secrecy, impatience with government regulations, backroom dealings, handsome paydays — it dawned on us that Mr. Cheney is in step with the times. He has privatized the job of vice president of the United States.
Frank Rich has been startled to finding himself feeling a little sympathy for Richard Nixon and wonders whether he'd ever feel that way about George W. Bush.
Perhaps not. It’s hard to pity someone who, to me anyway, is too slight to hate. Unlike Nixon, President Bush is less an overreaching Machiavelli than an epic blunderer surrounded by Machiavellis. He lacks the crucial element of acute self-awareness that gave Nixon his tragic depth. Nixon came from nothing, loathed himself and was all too keenly aware when he was up to dirty tricks. Mr. Bush has a charmed biography, is full of himself and is far too blinded by self-righteousness to even fleetingly recognize the havoc he’s inflicted at home and abroad.
So why is it that he isn't being impeached as Nixon, essentially, was? Congress, horrified by Nixon, nonetheless had the humanity to tell him to get out before he was thrown out. But not Bush, not so far. Why? There's certainly enough anger and disappointment on both sides to do the job.
Arguably the most accurate gut check on what the country feels about Mr. Bush was a January Newsweek poll finding that a sizable American majority just wished that his “presidency was over.” This flat-lining administration inspires contempt and dismay more than the deep-seated, long-term revulsion whipped up by Nixon; voters just can’t wait for Mr. Bush to leave Washington so that someone, anyone, can turn the page and start rectifying the damage. Yet if he lacks Nixon’s larger-than-life villainy, he will nonetheless leave Americans feeling much the way they did after Nixon fled: in a state of anger about the state of the nation.
The rage is already omnipresent, and it’s bipartisan.
The good news is -- and I can vouch for this out here in red-state-land -- we aren't angry with each other, we're angry at the leadership. Angry at ourselves. Fed up. Definitely read for a change. Who are we going to replace this damned presidency with?
Frank Rich foresees a gentle sunami of cleansing calm -- a Gerald Ford after the loathesome Richard Nixon.
In this climate, it’s hardly happenstance that many Republicans are looking in desperation to Fred Thompson. Robert Novak pointedly welcomed his candidacy last week because, in his view, Mr. Thompson is “less harsh” in tone than his often ideologically indistinguishable rivals and “a real-life version of the avuncular fictional D.A. he plays on TV.” The Democratic boomlet for Barack Obama is the flip side of the same coin: his views don’t differ radically from those of most of his rivals, but his conciliatory personality is the essence of calm, the antithesis of anger.
Is Barack more like Denzel Washington or Sam Waterston?
I don't know, and I don't know how an Obama vs. Fred Thompson race would play out either. America may just settle back in its chair and watch the screen, tapped out.
