NYT: The Presidential Fine Line

[kskiska]

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - In an election that could well turn on questions of war and peace, danger and safety, all politics sometimes seem to be security these days. And all security has an unmistakable overtone of politics, whatever the reality or immediacy of any announced threat.

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday in dismissing any suggestion that his latest threat warning had a political motive. But on Sunday, Mr. Ridge, a former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, did do some politics all the same, when he declared that the intelligence behind his alert was "the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror."

(snip)

And even those remarks, (Howard Dean's) barbed as they are, are no sharper than the comments some Republicans leveled at President Bill Clinton six years ago, when he ordered cruise missile strikes against Qaeda outposts in retaliation for the bombing of American embassies in East Africa days after confessing to his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Daniel R. Coats, then a Republican senator from Indiana and now Mr. Bush's ambassador to Germany, summed up his feeling at the time.

"The danger here," Mr. Coats said then of Mr. Clinton, "is that once a president loses credibility with the Congress, as this president has through months of lies and deceit and manipulations and deceptions, stonewalling, it raises into doubt everything he does and everything he says, and maybe everything he doesn't do and doesn't say." He added: "I just hope and pray the decision that was made was made on the basis of sound judgment, and made for the right reasons, and not made because it was necessary to save the president's job."
more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/politics/campaign/04assess.html

[otohara]

1. One Of The Media Whores Said Bush is Furious w/ NYT's

for daring to question the timing of this latest terra alert - and accusing them of doing it for politcal ressons...

Could it be The Times is growing a spine?

[movonne]

2. I doubt this ...he does not read. Someone told him to be mad.

[fearnobush]

3. More fake outrage.

[ixion]

4. one thing about the Mad Chimp... he never has to fake rage...

He has lots and lots of (not so) latent rage... plenty to go around to all who oppose his decree.

That said, I don't believe the NYT has started growing a spine yet, because Judith Miller is still on their payroll.

[saigon68]

5. AS A CLUELESS CHIMPANZEE, his Handlers are in charge

He is a Clueless Sock-Puppet incapable of even the most rudimentary thought processes.

[Moderator]

6. Great article, but not LBN

This is a news analysis, not Latest Breaking News.