The New York Times did a critique of the interview between former President Bush and Matt Lauer. As a New York Times reader, I will be the first to admit the critique was a lot more critical. Just goes to show the difference stances of the different networks. In it, they discussed the lows and highs of his presidency. Bush is getting a lot more critiques for the saying Kanye calling him a racist as the lowest point of his presidency. Forget all the other mistakes he made and the terrible decisions. Not to mention the Former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder, who today said that Bush lied in his memoirs when he said that Schroeder privately offered the president full-fledged support in 2002 should he decide to invade Iraq. He also lied in the interview we saw in class where he said they had no intelligence of the 9/11 attacks. I mean we all know that to be false yet he still said it. In class, we talked about how that could be seen as both good and bad. He could keep his stance to show solidarity or say he made a mistake and show weakness. A lot of things have been said about his interview and his book tour, what do you guys think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/arts/television/09watch.html?_r=1&ref=politics
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/10/ex-german-chancellor-accuses-bush-of-untruths-in-memoir/#more-134656
I can't help but think it is interesting that Bush waited until after the midterm elections to remind everyone that he was in power two years ago. Some say that the primary mission of the whole tea party thing was to temporarily re-brand conservatism just long enough to produce a specific result in the midterms. I think that may be a bit of a stretch, but it's food for thought nevertheless. Obviously the whole book tour thing is some kind of pathetic legacy repair exercise, but I would like to have seen this Bush effort before the midterm elections so Americans could be reminded of exactly what they were voting about.
ReplyDeleteI had not heard that theory. It certainly makes sense to be honest and not surprising since the environment in the country seems to be very angry and conservative at the moment. The fact that he waited until after the elections were over might have been a strategic move, but who knows. I have to laugh whenever I watch him so I guess it might have been good to remind people not to makes the same mistakes again, but as we now know that didn't work out so well.
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