Bush-Bashing: It Keeps Getting Easier

These days it can be hard to be tougher on the Bush administration than its conservative critics. Yesterday, I participated in the roundtable discussion on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and the lead subject was the latest Middle East crisis. Though Hamas bears responsibility for the violent coup it mounted in the Gaza Strip, I was prepared to blast the Bush White House for having botched Middle East policy for the past six years. But I quickly realized it would be hard to outflank conservative commentator George Will. Here's how the roundtable opened:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (on tape): Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It did not turn out as President Bush hoped five years ago this week in the Rose Garden. That was President Bush on June 24th, 2002, when he called for the Palestinians to replace Yasser Arafat. Here to talk about where we are right now, I'm joined by George Will, David Corn of "The Nation" magazine and our White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. Welcome. And George, you heard Senator Biden. He laid a lot of blame for this Hamas coup this week on the president and the White House.

GEORGE WILL: Well, this administration so fervently believes in the tonic of democracy as a transformative elixir. I mean, this president, what you just showed said, well, we'll have elections and this will produce tolerance. Actually, I think they've got it backwards. First you get tolerance, then you try democracy. Elections haven't gone well in Lebanon, where it produced Hezbollah. It hasn't gone well in Iraq, where if anything, it's aggravated the sense of sectarian differences. It hasn't gone well in Palestine. When, against the urgings of the Israelis, we pressed for the elections that overthrew Fatah, who we were backing and put in Hamas, Condoleezza Rice said nobody saw it coming. Those four words are the epitaph of this administration.

"Nobody saw it coming"--that could apply to the administration on many levels. And Will delivered this indictment with complete disdain. Next, Martha Raddatz, ABC News' White House correspondent, piled on:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Martha Raddatz, the Israeli Prime Minister is coming here on Tuesday, so what can the administration do right now? The officials I talk to say they're trying to say this is an opportunity to build up president Abbas now that he has control of the West Bank to himself.

MARTHA RADDATZ: But I don't think they really have any idea how to build up Abbas. I mean, it hasn't worked so far. There's corruption. They seem to be in denial about Hamas, and they've been in denial about Hamas all along. I remember the president very early on said look, they didn't vote for Hamas because of terror. That's not the reason they voted. Well, he should take that lesson now because people want jobs, people want money, people want a way of life that they may find in Hamas that they didn't find in Fatah. So this is far from solved. It's far from solved in the West Bank whether they'll have any power. And I think right now you probably see the White House scrambling to come up with some sort of opportunity or even what to say.

Incompetence, denial--what's left? Now it was my turn:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Although, David, can an isolated Hamas actually provide these opportunities to its people in the Gaza strip?

DAVID CORN: Well, no, it can't, which is why the situation could get worse there. You could have a humanitarian crisis with 1.4 million people there cut off from water, electricity and food supplies which come in through Israel. I mean, let me agree with what George just said, said that in addition to the administration, you know, getting the tonic wrong, I think they really believe that speechifying was more important than the hard work of diplomacy. I mean in the Clinton years, they had the Oslo agreement and there was a lot of diplomacy back and forth. The Bush people came in and they that - they actually threw it aside with a lot of disregard and believed that they could sort of elevate the issue by giving these grand eloquent speeches about democracy, and that would do the trick, and they let the hard work of diplomacy, I think, go to the side. And now we're paying the dividends.

So right, left and center agreed: Bush blew it in the Middle East. When it comes to support from outsiders, the Bush White House is basically left only with the small neocon crowd (and some of its allies, such as John McCain). And even many neocons blast the Bush administration for screwing up their war in Iraq. (And they're fit to be tied about Bush's refusal--so far--to pardon Scooter Libby.) Bush-bashing is becoming too common and, alas, even easier than it once was.

Posted by David Corn at June 18, 2007 11:10 AM