“You would never see LBJ, Reagan, Bush Sr. or Clinton sitting there with the vice president in a hearing like this. They wouldn’t have even thought of it. They were rugged and independent. Their personalities wouldn’t have allowed it.” – James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington (04/29/04 Chicago Trib/Zeleny)

Today’s profile in courage

After an exhausting week and $10 million attacking John Kerry’s outstanding military service from behind Karen Hughes’ voluminous 80’s tapered pants …

Exactly a year after snapping on a codpiece to declare major combat operations over …

And challenging terrorists to “bring it on” and fire at soldiers who, unlike him, actually showed up to serve …

And imperiously thumbing his nose at allies who could provide a real multinational presence in Iraq acceptable to the local populace …

Causing the tragic additional deaths of 669 troops …

Which our Great Leader has tried to hide by forbidding media coverage because it might make him look bad …

Yet disgracefully uses their memory for fundraising and to label his critics as unpatriotic …

He now faces his greatest challenge: hiding behind Dick Cheney and desperately hoping the 9/11 probe asks the VP and not him uncomfortable questions.

• If it’s the CIA’s fault, why did their explicit warnings about Osama bin Laden compel the pResident to take what was nearly the longest vacation in presidential history?
• Why does the pResident continue to bury Clinton administration documents related to counterterrorism, even though Clinton and Gore have asked for their release to the probe?
• Why does the pResident continue to blame the Clinton administration?
• Why is pRresident Bush appearing with Cheney and why do they refuse to testify under oath?
• Since they’re not under oath and it’s only a “meeting” to explain the pResident’s “attitudes” about terra, why will the pResident have three attorneys present?
• On what fucking planet would anyone with sparking synapses regard the worst pResident of the worst administration in history as the only option for national security?

Meet the original president baby by the inimitable Tom Tomorrow, who appears every Monday in Salon. Non-subscribers have to see an ad first. Tom Tomorrow is also archived here at Working for Change.

Check out related quotes and attributions in the extension to this post.

“I think it’s highly unusual, under the circumstances of an informal meeting like this, to bring your lawyer with you,” Dean said. “It escalates the formality of an informal proceeding.” [John Dean, former White House counsel for President Nixon] (04/29/04 AP/Reichmann)

“They need to have one story and it’s easiest to have one story when they’re in the room together,” [James] Thurber [director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies] said about the reason he thought Bush and Cheney wanted to be interviewed together. “I don’t mean they’re trying to distort anything. It’s useful to them. It protects them if they’re both in the room at the same time.”(04/29/04 AP/Reichmann)

“He has dragged his feet all along with respect to this, the creation of the commission and his willingness to talk,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “I’m sure the president would like to see this go away. But whether it does depends on what information is gained and shared for the commissioners.” (04/29/04 Chicago Trib/Zeleny)

Mr. Bush’s reluctant and restrictive cooperation with the panel is consistent with the administration’s pattern of stonewalling reasonable requests for documents and testimony and then giving up only the minimum necessary ground when the dispute becomes public. Today’s testimony will be in private in the White House, away from reporters or television cameras. The session will not be recorded, and there will be no formal transcript. The president’s aides have defended this excessive degree of secrecy with the usual arguments about protecting highly classified information and not wanting to establish dangerous precedents. (04/29/04 NYT Editorial, reg req’d)

So, there’s still a lot of information that hasn’t come out. And to say that everything has been done spectacularly — that this administration would have done nothing different, that does upset me, because I can tell you this: My mother was a CEO of a company, and if she had failures, or her direct reports had failures, then she was accountable. And we have not seen accountability in this administration. I agree, I’m very happy that this PDB was declassified. But I have to tell you that it took the work of many family members many years. We fought for 14 months against the Bush administration, for this commission. He did not want to have it. When we finally got a commission, we had to fight for it to have subpoena power. We then had to fight to have it extended. We’ve been coming up against roadblock after roadblock from this administration. I’m glad that we’ve finally gotten to this point, where we are getting more information out, but I have to tell you, it has not been easy, and I’d have a lot more faith if they hadn’t been so adamantly opposed to finding the truth. [Carie LeMack, whose mother perished on 9/11] (04/11/04 CNN/Late Edition)