Bush; MoveOn; Code Pink

When President Bush lowered himself into the MoveOn.org "Betray Us" kerfuffle, I observed that such squabbles should be considered unworthy of the office of the president, if not necessarily the man himself.

The position of the White House should be that sniping with a political action committee is beneath the president. He has more important things to do. He is too busy defending America to get distracted by this little left-wing group and their little newspaper ad. He might have taken a lesson from the way his dad marginalized the ACLU when he ran against Dukakis in 1988.

Instead, Bush has helped elevate MoveOn to epic stature. They are such a threat to the Bush agenda that Bush himself felt compelled attack them. This negates any damage that MoveOn might have suffered from the last week and a half of sustained right-wing criticism. Rather than some little left-wing smear group, as O'Reilly might describe them, they are worthy of the attention of President Bush himself. They are significant. They are a force to be reckoned with.

Now, add Code Pink to the growing list of left-wing interest groups with whom Bush is willing to trade barbs.



Maybe Bush just needed a little pick-me-up. That would explain the setting (Heritage Foundation), the nonsensical applause line, and the self-satisfied smirk as his audience bursts into savage cheers.

Be that as it may, I have to wonder what the president's advisors and speech writers are thinking, sending him out with those kinds of remarks. Why on earth is Bush even speaking the name "Code Pink?" All most people know about them is that they march in protest of the Iraq occupation and occasionally disrupt congressional hearings with anti-war chants. At least that's all people used to know about them. Now, they are a group of progressive activists so formidable that the president himself felt compelled to call them out in a major GWOT address.

Bush has once again elevated the stature of a group of lefties he should be trying to marginalize, and diminshed himself in the process.

I'm not sure what Bush gains by this, but whatever it is, I hope it works for him.

Oh, and as for the "warnings" that Bush says congress should be paying attention to: does he mean warnings like this one?