But it was baaaaad when Clinton did it.
Add this to the ever-growing list of Bush flip-flops.
What are you, a terrorist loving commie? When Dems do something, it is big government doing something bad and must be questioned. When GOP does the same thing it is in the interest of national security and your patriotism is suspect if you question it.
Oh mommy, I ain’t no commie…
– Brewer and Shipley
I tripped across a great acronym this morning at one blog: IOKIYAR.
It’s OK If You’re A Republican.
You know, I dislike Bush as much as the next guy, and I’ll be doing my part to show him the door in '04, but this list doesn’t seem all that damning. I’m looking over the bullets and it seems the relationship between some of these individuals and the Bush family are personal, not political. Frat brother? Guy who introduced him to his wife? These are people who have known them since before they ever wielded any power or influence. The White House is the residence of the President and his family. I see it as completely legitimate to invite personal friends over. I also don’t care that his friends from way back helped him out in his campaign. If I ever decided to run for president some of my best friends from way back would undoubtedly help out in any way they could and I’d hate to think that would disqualify me from inviting my best friends over to my residence during my tenure in office. At least three names on this list would qualify as personal, not political, friends.
People who aren’t affiliated with the Bush family in any way other than political ties could be suspect, but a campaign manager from the past could qualify as a family friend as well. I’d be more suspicious of people with ongoing relationships with the Bush family which were almost completely political, like Freeman or Langdon.
That doesn’t speak to hypocrisy of course. He may be a huge hypocrite if he was criticising the Clintons for having personal guests. He is almost certainly a hypocrite if he was berating them for having guests with little more than political ties to the family in residence. And these relationships should be scrutinized, especially in the case of purely political connections, for evidence of improper conduct.
But on balance I think the first family should be allowed lattitude to have personal guests over to the White House fairly freely. It isn’t like they can travel to their friends to have an evening together.
Enjoy,
Steven
Bush always struck me as a man who was partial to delicous, meaty, Greek snack foods…the question is does he prefer lamb to chicken? Does he have extra chilli sauce? These are the great questions of our time and I think we would all like closure on this.
“Close personal friends”? Some of them perhaps, although I would classify a number of them as business associates (who may or may not also be friends). I feel reasonable confident that the governors of Colorado and New York are not close personal firends, or if they are, are of very recent vintage. I see no claim of friendship for venture capitalist and Republican fundraiser Brad Freeman.
“Before he wielded power and influence”? When was that exactly? Bush fils has been able to wield power and influence most or all of his life. Much of that was borrowed power, borrowed from his father and grandfather (and their money) but it was available to him nonetheless.
Regardless, it gets right back to that personal favorite of mine, the appearance of impropriety.
C’mon, there’s no hypocrisy here. Bush said opening up the Lincoln Bedroom to big donors was bad for the country. He didn’t say you couldn’t stay somewhere else in the White House (there’s lots of closet space). And I see nothing in that story that shows that the money men stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom. See?
*Los Angeles attorney Donald Etra stayed at the Bush White House several times and at Camp David once. Etra, a Yale classmate of President Bush, said he and his wife were invited as friends, not because they each gave Bush $1,000 in 2000.
“Friendship comes first, donations come second,” Etra said.*
You betcha.
Of course, the Bush Administration has been busy on other fronts countering the scandals of the Clinton years. For instance, Bush has taken steps to assure that no dubious pardons will be made in the waning moments of his Presidency.
Hasn’t he?
And on the other side, the Democrats have been pushing hard for reforms to eliminate the Electoral College and assure that the popular vote will determine Presidential elections. Right?
I love principled politics.
Of course, as of this date this remains unproven. We should all work to hasten the day when GeeDubya can demonstrate his sterling integrity in this regard.
I was being sarcastic. Are there any written guidelines in existence (never mind the potential for weaseling around them)?
On the other hand, the governors of states may well be staying for business reasons. We don’t have enough information to decide at the moment. Certainly not based on this article.
Anyone who buddied up to him before he ran for Texas governor had to either really like the guy or have some big brass balls. He was a pretty useless character until that point. A male Paris Hilton as it were.
I’d expect it would be very hard to be President and avoid the apperance of impropriety. It isn’t as if he has a list of cases before him and the parties in those cases that he can just avoid. Virtually anyone could buddy up to him and the appearance of impropriety would be a virtual certainty. When you wield as much power and influence as he does you can affect the interests of virtually anoyone. So should he have no friends? No matter what he does he will always have the ability to favor his friends, no matter who they are or what their interests are. That’s just part of the office. What we should be concerned with is when his justifications for policy decisions seem to ring false or uncompelling. Then we can begin to see if there may be some alternative motive for this policy change and that would lead us to seeing how this would affect the interests of his friends. We can’t really work from the other direction because with the flexibility and amount of power that he has it is a virtual certainty that everything he does will positively affect someone he knows. That doesn’t mean it was his motive.
Enjoy,
Steven
Again, the reference to the treatment of Clinton for the same thing. “Where’s the outrage?”
Perhaps you’ve heard of his father? Perhaps you also know of his history of running failing businesses and getting bailed out by his father’s friends? Oh, yes, wealthy people who buddied up to him at *any * time in his life might well have had ulterior motives beyond the ones normal people would experience, mightn’t they?
I wasn’t outraged at what happened in the Lincoln, or the Clinton for that matter, bedroom during Clinton’s tenure. Proof of selling stays in the White House for campaign contributions would have been something to be upset about. So if you’re railing against the tiny minded fools who were outraged at non-commercial use of the White House to accomodate actual friends of the first family when they were the Clintons, then go right ahead. At the moment though, absent evidence of actual transactions involving something given in exchange for the stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, this is the same situation and outrage at Bush for it would relegate you to the same level as those tiny minded fools.
Any outrage over personal friends staying in the Lincoln bedroom would be rediculous. I find it equally rediculous when it is directed at Bush. The first family LIVES in the White House. I’ll be damned if someone tells me I’m wrong to invite a friend from childhood, a person who introduced me to my wife, to stay in a guest room in my own place of residence. Get a better list, provide some evidence of quid pro quo then we’ll talk.
Enjoy,
Steven
Mayhap it’s a matter of degrees. Clinton invited more than three times that number. Not that I really care… throw a fuckin’ slumber party in the Great Emancipator’s quarters, for all I give a damn.
Wasn’t the Chinese contributions scandal the bigger story at the time?
No real disagreement on the little substance there is, Steven - but then, we’re still left with the manufactured outrage and the pious promise to “restore honor and dignity to the White House”. That hypocrisy and the contortions needed to defend it, which continues even today and even on this board, constitute the true subject here, not political fundraising methods. Exposing and examining hypocrisy is hardly acting the “small-minded fool”, it’s fighting ignorance.
The same people who claimed to be defending a sacred principle not that long ago now claim not to give a damn. What’s the problem with calling them on it? That they might learn something about themselves or about the world?
I’m not particularly outraged by it either, although I don’t see how Clinton’s ~800 sleepovers over 4 years, are 3x Bush’s ~540 sleepovers over 3 years. (A guest every other night - even most politicians aren’t that gregarious!) But that’s not that material; the fact remains that both of them had far more guests than is explained by friendship alone, or even friendship and working political (but nonmonetary) relationships. When Clinton was doing it, my basic feeling was that I’d rather see him give away a night in the Lincoln bedroom to a donor, than an oil lease in an environmentally sensitive wilderness.
However, the point is that Bush did condemn such behavior when running against Gore in late 2000. Here he is from the first Presidential debate:
And the Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers were one of his recurring examples for his claim that we needed to restore honor and dignity to the White House.
No, I’m not outraged; I’m not even surprised. I’m just pointing out that Bush propelled himself into the Presidency partly on a condemnation of the very practice that he is now engaging in at roughly the same scale as his predecessor.
That’s called hypocrisy. And I’m just adding it to the pile of reasons to believe that Bush’s words are meaningless, that there’s no reason why anyone (other than a rich person hoping for more tax cuts, or a corporate CEO hoping for fewer regulations) should believe a word this man says. By election day, I hope that every American knows how absurd it is to put “President Bush” and “man of integrity” in the same sentence.
We’ve all got to have our goals in life. That’s one of mine.
I know that we usually don’t point out spelling errors and typos, but I’m afraid that people will not understand the subject of your thread. What you probably meant to say was:
“Bush opens Lincoln Bedroom to Big Boners”
Carry on.
Anita, that’s what I thought the thread title was when I was skimming titles. I did a classic double-take.
270, RTF, according to your article. The number was split 'twixt Honest Abe’s place and Camp David.
Eh. I just call it politics, man. Half of them do everything that half of them condemn, and the other half just do most.
So in a sea of liars, you’re singling out one liar to call a liar? Whatever gives you kicks, buddy.
Dammit, forgot to say this…
Look, RT, it’s no invalid counter to point out that most of Bush’s guests have been family friends or close associates. The list I linked to points out that they didn’t even include any of Bill’s 35 personal friends or relatives (or the 72 friends of Chelsea’s).
Clinton got slammed for opening it to “anyone that would pay cash”. Bush opened it to friends and associates. NOT the same thing, so NOT hypocrisy.
Cite?
Good luck; ‘most of 540’ is a lot of friends and close associates.
If that’s your attitude, why bother with political debates at all? (MPSIMS is thataway, if that’s how you feel.) If every politician is constantly lying, then there’s really no point to it, you know.
Realistically, that line can be dumped into any political debate anywhere, and the alternatives are to regard it either as a trump card that invalidates the worth of debating at all, or as a ridiculous red herring that should be tossed out with the garbage before it smells.