Obama: “ultimately the buck stops with me”
President Barack Obama reached back into history in choosing the words for his much-awaited statement on intelligence mistakes over the Christmas Day attempted airline attack.
“I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer,” Obama said on Thursday after much speculation on whether he would do a mea culpa.
“For ultimately, the buck stops with me.”
And with those words, Obama became the latest American president to use a variation of that phrase to show the public he was aware of the huge responsibilities that come with the Oval Office.
President Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk “The BUCK STOPS here!” and he would refer to that motto in public statements to emphasize that it was the president who had to make the decisions. “He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. that’s his job,” Truman said in his farewell address.
And President Gerald Ford used the phrase in his remarks when he granted a pardon to Richard Nixon.
“I do believe that the buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right,” Ford said.
Is Justice Stevens sending early warning signal?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired only one clerk for the term starting in October 2010, instead of the usual four, fueling speculation that he may be planning to step down next summer, the New York Times reports.
Stevens, 89, is the current court’s longest-serving member. Nominated by Republican President Gerald Ford, Stevens joined the high court in December 1975 and went on to become the leader of its liberal wing.
If the Chicago-born Stevens steps down, President Barack Obama would have his second opportunity to nominate a justice to the court.
Or maybe Stevens is keeping his options open and planning to hire more clerks later, the New York Times article said. But the newspaper notes that hiring decisions may be an early warning system for hints about the justices’ retirement plans.
It points out that Justice David Souter hired no clerks this spring, in what turned out to be an accurate signal of his decision to step down.
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Photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing (Justice John Paul Stevens sits for a photo inside the Supreme Court in Washington)
