BloggeRhythms

Josh Rogin writes in bloombergview.com that, “In a closed-door meeting with Jewish donors on Saturday night, former President George W. Bush delivered his harshest public criticisms to date against his successor on foreign policy, saying that President Barack Obama is being naïve about Iran and the pending nuclear deal and losing the war against the Islamic State.”

That sort of commentary from the former president is quite unusual, even behind closed doors. As a rule, his respect for the importance of the presidency is such that he declines mentioning even the slightest disagreement with administrative policy. However, it seems things have deteriorated so vastly, in his opinion, that he can no longer keep his silence on the foreign policy subject. 

Bush opined that, “Obama’s plan to lift sanctions on Iran with a promise that they could snap back in place at any time was not plausible.” Also adding that, “the deal would be bad for American national security in the long term,” suggesting that “You think the Middle East is chaotic now? Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren. That’s how Americans should view the deal.”  

He then “went into a detailed criticism of Obama’s policies in fighting the Islamic State and dealing with the chaos in Iraq. On Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of 2011, he quoted Senator Lindsey Graham calling it a “strategic blunder.” 

 

Bush himself, however, signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw those troops. But the idea had been to negotiate a new status of forces agreement to keep U.S. forces there past 2011. In Obama’s case, his administration tried and failed to negotiate such an agreement, which obviously has made a huge difference that’s been almost totally negative.

Farther along in the meeting, Bush told several anecdotes about his old friend and rival Russian President Vladimir Putin that were quite insightful. Recalling that “Putin met his dog Barney at the White House and then later, when Bush went to Moscow, Putin showed him his dog and remarked that he was “bigger stronger and faster than Barney.” For Bush, that behavior showed him that Putin didn’t think in “win-win” terms.”

And then a short Bush remark described his media issues in a succinct, but accurate, nutshell: “Putin was rich, divorced his wife and loves power” Adding that, “Putin’s domestic popularity comes from his control of Russian media,” and according to Bush. "Hell, I'd be popular, too, if I owned NBC news."

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife, written by none other than one of the premier liberal spokeswomen, Eleanor Clift, in thedailybeast.com.

 

Titling her column, “Behind the Man Who Outed Clinton’s Cash,” Clift begins by stating that, “Author Peter Schweizer may be a conservative, but that doesn’t mean his investigations don’t have merit, and his allegations won’t stick.”

 

Then, in a single paragraph, Clift defines the situation precisely, writing, “It’s a mistake for the Clinton campaign to write off conservative author Peter Schweizer as a right-wing hack. It won’t work, and it’s not true. If he were as off-base as the campaign and its allies portray him, would a high-quality publication like The New York Times risk its reputation by partnering with him? And would Common Cause, the gold standard for good-government groups, which is currently chaired by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, be calling for an independent review that would be made public of all large donations to the Clinton Foundation?”

 

Clift adds, “The Clintons have a standard template for pushing back, and they’re going to use it to make questions about their finances seem part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, but character assassination only goes so far. It may work for a while, but if the data in Schweizer’s upcoming book, Clinton Cash, survives the vetting it will get from the mainstream media, Clinton will have to clean up her act.”

 

What’s truly amusing, though, is that after brilliantly summing up the significant extent of the damage the Clinton’s have wrought upon themselves by their self-serving, likely illegal, behavior, Clift couldn’t just completely desert them. She seemed compelled to add that, “Aside from actual wrongdoing, and there’s no evidence of that, this is about the appearance of conflicts of interest, and in politics, appearances are everything.”

 

Nonetheless, though, when loyalists like Clift even consider writing an article as potentially damaging to the Clinton’s as this one, the sense of political doom among those true believers must be truly awesome.

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios