If you thought that shoe-throwing episode in Baghdad was odd, you’re not alone — President George W. Bush thought so too.
 
“It has got to be one of the most weird moments of my presidency,” he told CNN in an interview Tuesday. “Here I am getting ready to answer questions from a free press in a democratic Iraq and a guy stands up and throws a shoe.”
 
What was going through his mind? Not much it seems.
 
“I didn’t have much time to reflect on anything. I was ducking and dodging,” Bush said.
 
Throwing shoes at someone is considered a supreme insult in Iraq, a shoe being considered dirty. People whacked Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad with shoes after it was toppled during the U.S. invasion.
 
Bush says he doesn’t harbor any anger toward the Iraqi TV journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi for attacking him. Al-Zaidi has been cheered by some in the Arab world for his action, but he faces potential criminal charges in Baghdad.
 
“I’m not even sure what his status is,” Bush said. “They shouldn’t overreact.”
 
Bush told CNN the most important decision he made during his presidency was “sending troops into harm’s way,” and not once but twice — in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
“The reason it’s the most important is because it’s the most consequential,” he said
 
“It is a decision that no president should ever take lightly and every president should take a lot of time thinking about it because lives will be lost,” Bush added.
 
Asked if he ever revisited the decision, Bush said he sometimes thought about it but usually “with a concern about whether or not we would succeed.”
 
“In Iraq, I was deeply concerned about whether or not we would succeed,” he said, adding that was especially true in 2006. “A lot of people in Washington were saying, let’s get out now. And I obviously chose not to do that.  But, that was a very difficult period.”
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Reuters TV (Bush ducks a shoe during a news conference in Baghdad Dec. 14)

Republicans in Congress effectively said good riddance to President George W. Bush this week, handing their unpopular leader a last big defeat by rejecting a $14 billion auto industry bailout the White House negotiated with Democrats.
 
“No one cares what the White House thinks,” scoffed a senior Republican leadership aide.
 
With Democrat Barack Obama set to replace Bush as president on Jan. 20, the aide said: “There’s frustration among Republicans that Bush doesn’t have a feel for our positions, and relief that he’s leaving.”
 
With Bush at the head of the party the past eight years, the Republicans’ reputation for fiscal conservatism has been shredded by record federal deficits.
 
Republicans, seeking to restore that reputation, say market forces, not U.S. taxpayers, should decide the fate of the auto industry. They charge the bailout would be no more than a downpayment on failure.

 In addition, they argue automakers would be better off to reorganize under bankruptcy protection.

“I’m not surprised Republicans wouldn’t listen to Bush,” a Democratic aide said. “This really shows how weak the president is.”
 
“Republicans figured this was about their political skins and their political message,” the aide added. “But I don’t think they win anything out of this. They just put on a political show with people’s lives at stake.”
 
Bush further upset Republicans Friday when he yielded to mostly Democratic demands and signaled he was willing to provide aid to automakers through the $700 billion bailout he pushed through Congress to help Wall Street.
 
That rescue package generated plenty of voter backlash in the Nov. 4 election, particularly against Republicans.
 
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who had a tougher time winning re-election than initially anticipated, seemed among those happy to see Bush go.
 
“Our members, in one way, are kind of relieved by the departure of an administration that became unpopular and made it very difficult for us to compete,” McConnell said shortly after the election.

The Republicans’ plight, it seems, is not so very different from that of the automakers’: An unpopular model has made it difficult for them to compete.

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Photo credit: Top: Reuters/Larry Downing (Bush at Texas A&M commencement ceremony Dec. 12) ; Bottom: Reuters/Rebecca Cook (United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, center, criticizes Republican handling of auto bailout negotiations during news conference in Detroit Dec. 12)

DENVER - Republican presidential candidate John McCain may be distancing himself from George W. Bush, but the Arizona senator does not believe his would-be predecessor should be impeached.

Pressed about the issue by a young voter at a lively question and answer session in Colorado Monday, McCain, who voted “guilty” in Democratic President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, said he did not believe Bush should be removed from office.

“I do not believe that an effort to impeach the president of the United States is appropriate or necessary or called for,” McCain said.

McCain has criticized Bush’s initial handling of the Iraq war and distanced himself from the president on climate change policies and other issues.

Former Democratic presidential contender Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio representative, introduced articles of impeachment against Bush in June over the objection of party leaders. The House later referred the 35 articles of impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee, where they were expected to die.

The articles of impeachment accuse Bush of misdeeds in connection with the Iraq war.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (McCain greets Bush ahead of fundraising event in May)

DALLAS - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s promise on Tuesday of a more robust approach to faith-based social programs has been blasted from the left and the right — and raised some pointed questions from academia.

But it has also won support from the religious left and centrists, the groups it is aimed at as the Obama campaign seeks to woo wavering evangelicals.

Obama unveiled the plan in Ohio, pledging to beef up the faith-based community programs pioneered by President George W. Bush.

On the left, Americans United for Separation of Church and State decried Obama’s promise to expand it, saying : “Rather than try to correct the defects of the Bush ‘faith-based’ initiative, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would do better to shut it down.”

Obama did lay down one rule in his speech that has drawn some comment. He said: “If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.”

This will be welcomed by many Americans who are uncomfortable with this mix of church and state but it has also raised some eyebrows.

“Certain religious groups in the United States are unabashedly focussed on converting others — it’s part of their faith. When the federal government stipulates that it will withhold funding from a group that proselytizes — as indicated by Obama’s ground rules above — is it not, ironically, discriminating against that group on the basis of its religion?,” asked Jacques Berlinerblau of Georgetown University in a blog on Wednesday.

The “Religious Right” saw Obama’s announcement as a “faith-based feint.” Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, asked if Obama’s reported opposition to efforts to ban gay marriage in California meant “that faith-based organizations that support (traditional) marriage will be disqualified from federal funding under an Obama presidency?”

From the “Religious Left,” evangelical leader and Sojourners founder Jim Wallis told Reuters he welcomed Obama’s initiative.

“It shows that Obama is both comfortable and articulate about his faith and we haven’t always seen this from a Democrat,” he said.

If Obama has scored with the Religious Left then his faith strategy may be paying dividends.

Photo credit: Reuters/Matt Sullivan. Obama speaks at Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio, July 1, 2008.
 

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - As a Democratic presidential candidate, New York senator and former first lady, Hillary Clinton has had her share of media scrutiny. Still, she says the news media should become a more aggressive public watchdog.

“I really do. I really do,” Clinton told reporters when asked if she sincerely favors greater press scrutiny. 

“On the right things. On things that are important to the future of our country. On things that actually matter. I would love that,” said Clinton, long hounded by the press as one of the nation’s most popular yet polarizing figures.

Clinton made the remarks to reporters on her campaign plane on Wednesday night in wake of the new book by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who says the Bush administration manipulated information to lead the U.S. into the Iraq war.

“What I hope is that the press and the public and the political class will be much more vigorous and skeptical than everybody was,” Clinton said.

“Everyone, you know, in his or her own way, basically let the administration get away with it. And they got away with it. They got re-elected and here we are,” she said.

Referring to McClellan’s book as well as ones by other former administration officials, Clinton said, “Unfortunately, there were a lot of people in a position to know much more than most of us who went along.

“I find that very sad.”

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Republican Sen. John McCain’s personal narrative as a war hero in Vietnam has Democrats treading carefully when they criticize him. 

Instead of trading barbs with each other, Democratic White House hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton this week have trained their attention on McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. 

Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, have assailed McCain for his support for the Iraq war and his backing of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. 

But they have made clear the attacks are not personal. 

Just before accusing McCain of lacking an understanding of how to fix the struggling economy and of pushing policies that amount to “standing on the sidelines” of the housing crisis, Obama at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, commended McCain for his service to his country. 

“Most of us know his biography and it is worthy of admiration. This is a man who is a genuine American hero and has served his country with distinction,” Obama said. 

“My argument with John McCain is not his biography. It’s with his policies,” he added. 

Clinton adopted a similar tone in Philadelphia on Tuesday, where she addressed a crowd of union workers. Just before she accused McCain of being just like Bush on labor issues, she too paused to give the former POW his due. 

“After seven disastrous years of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the stakes in this election couldn’t be higher, and the need to change course couldn’t be more urgent,” she said. 

“But I’m here to tell you Senator John McCain, a friend of mine, someone whose service to our country I admire, is only offering more of the same,” she said. 

McCain was serving as a Navy pilot when his plane was shot down over Hanoi. He spent 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war, where he was tortured. 

McCain’s service during Vietnam is in the spotlight this week as he takes a tour focusing on his life story.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (McCain speaks during a town hall meeting in Alexandria, Virginia) 

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