Getting ready for church this morning, I sat stunned as new White House Chief of Staff
Josh Bolten made what has to be one of the worst appearances by a senior administration official in this history of televised interviews. I had assumed that Bolten was a bit more competent than Andy Card...I was literally stunned at how bad his performance was.
Note to Tony Snow: Don't ever let Bolten appear on television again.
For starters, Bolten dragged the United States into yet another war which everyone in the Administration has been trying to keep us out of. Responding to a question about a quote from RNC Chair Ken Mehlman earlier in the week...
MR. RUSSERT: But in terms of the Arab world when the chairman of the Republican Party, close friend of the president, says, "Today we are all Israelis," what single message do you think that sends?
MR. BOLTEN: The message, the message it should send is that we will support freedom-loving people who reject terror and we are, we are doing that as much as standing by the Israelis as we are by standing by the free national unity government in Iraq who, who are, after all, Arabs.
MR. RUSSERT: So an attack on Israel is an attack on the United States?
MR. BOLTEN: Well, that's, that's generally true with respect to allies is that that's the nature of an alliance, is that an attack on an ally has to be considered an attack on your ally as well. But like I say, that, that doesn't apply exclusively to the Israelis. That, that applies to, to Arabs, it applies to our European allies and it applies to our allies all over the world.
So the White House Chief of Staff believes that Hizbollah, in effect, attacked the United States two weeks ago? Wouldn't that put us in a state of war with Hizbollah?
The point where I actually laughed out loud at the television came when Russert confronted Bolten with statements from Iraqi PM Maliki (our ally, remember) in which Maliki criticized Israel's actions in Southern Lebanon. Watch Bolten's naked, shameless spin...
MR. RUSSERT: The Iraqi prime minister, Mr. Maliki, has weighed in as well. Now this is someone who is supposedly an ally of the United States. This was his observation on what's going on. "The Israeli attacks and air strikes are completely destroying Lebanon's infrastructure. We call on the world to take quick"--let's see--"stands to stop the Israeli aggression."
MR. BOLTEN: Yeah, and that's, that's the kind of language you might expect to hear from sovereign leaders in, in, in Arab countries. Israel is not very popular in the region. The, the good news is that that is a sovereign, democratically elected leader of Iraq able to express his views.
"Well, the Iraqi government may hate us, but at least it's a democratically-elected government who hates us!"
Wow...