Bush the Bystander

The White House Spin

The White House has a response to all this negativity: Hyping the prodigious effectiveness of Bush's Texas plain talk.

Steve Holland of Reuters delivers the message: "President George W. Bush, who irked key allies with his war in Iraq, is pushing diplomacy more in his second term and will use his penchant for Texas plain talk and slapping backs on visits this week to Germany and Russia. . . .

"Behind the scenes, Bush is a straight talker who lays out his position with little ambiguity, occasionally ruffling feathers. . . .

"Although he is often portrayed as a bit of a bull in a china shop, White House spokesman Tony Snow credited Bush with 'a chess player's ability to think several moves ahead' in his dealings with foreign leaders."

And here's another fan, at least with regards to Bush's approach to Iranian nukes: Robert Kagan writes in his Washington Post opinion column that, just possibly, Bush has a secret, brilliant fallback plan.

Maybe, Kagan writes, Bush "has already decided that he will not leave office in January 2009 without a satisfactory resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem. Let's imagine that he has already determined that if he cannot obtain Iran's agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons program voluntarily and verifiably, then he will order some form of military action to destroy as much of that program as possible before he leaves."

The Pig and the Fish

White House Brieifing reader Andrea Bernstein e-mailed me this morning: "Is it just me, or is the 'leader of the free world,' far more interested in the pig for dinner than the world that is falling apart at the seams? Is that really possible?"

Well, it does remind me a bit of my May 8 column , in which I wrote: "Is it possible that President Bush doesn't really enjoy his job?

"Asked by a German tabloid to name the most wonderful moment of his presidency, Bush on Friday said it came while he was on vacation, fishing on his private lake."

Geneva or Bust?

Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor write for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Bush administration urged Congress on Wednesday to write a law ratifying its use of makeshift military commissions to try detainees in the war on terror, rather than mandate new tribunals with strict legal codes so they would conform to the recent Supreme Court ruling that President Bush's commissions are unconstitutional.

"The administration's position illustrated anew that the June 29 Supreme Court decision is still subject to conflicting interpretations, and it remains unclear what the Bush administration is doing to abide by it. While Bush verbally pledged to abide by the ruling, the administration's plea to Congress suggests that it wants the legislature to rubber-stamp the policy the court found illegal."

Kate Zernike writes in the New York Times that "a day after saying that terror suspects had a right to protections under the Geneva Conventions," which was "widely interpreted as a retreat . . . testimony to Congress by administration lawyers on Wednesday made clear that the picture was more complicated."

But Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post that in spite of the apparent acquiescence to whatever the administration wants by House Armed Service Committee Republicans, Sen. John McCain "said yesterday that at a long White House meeting, with [Sen. Linsday] Graham and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley an agreement was reached that legislation would use the military code -- not the administration's plan -- as the framework, and a final bill would adhere to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions."

Toni Locy writes for the Associated Press: "Human rights advocates are skeptical about whether the administration really will make changes in its aggressive tactics or is simply trying to blunt last month's Supreme Court decision. . . .

"At face value, the Geneva provision now embraced by the administration would bar tactics that have been used against terrorism detainees by the military and the CIA. Those include: sleep deprivation, exposing prisoners to extreme hot and cold temperatures, forcing captives to stand or sit in uncomfortable positions for hours and using a tactic that makes a prisoner believe he is drowning."

What About Those Secret CIA Camps?

McClatchey's Talev and Taylor also raise an interesting point, writing that "questions remained as to whether that policy applies to the CIA, which reportedly holds detainees in secret prisons abroad.

"A White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius, said the new policy applies uniformly across the executive branch because that's what the Supreme Court decision requires, but he said he didn't know if Bush had issued a formal order to that effect. Lisaius wouldn't discuss the CIA, and the CIA declined to comment.

"Skeptics noted that so far only one executive agency, the Defense Department, has issued a formal policy change in writing to make its practices conform to the court's decision.

" 'Show me the opinion that says that,' said Scott Silliman, an expert on the law of war at Duke University, regarding the White House's assurance that the entire executive branch is covered by the policy change. 'I want to see it in writing.' "

Several of my readers, noting that Article Three envisions a role for an "impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross" offering its services, have asked how that could happen in a secret prison. Good question.

Novak Redux

I wrote in yesterday's column about Robert Novak 's not-terribly-revealing column about his role in the Valerie Plame leak.

But the fact that he made it super-official that Karl Rove was one of his sources is not entirely without significance.

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter/blogger Dick Polman writes: "If White House promises are intended to be taken at face value -- and if, indeed, sentences spoken in plain English are intended to be taken literally -- then empirical evidence suggests that master strategist Karl Rove should no longer be employed by the Bush administration."

Novak was on Fox News yesterday. Here is video and a transcript of his interview with Brit Hume.

White House Salaries

Alexis Simendinger of the National Journal beat me to the punch with the latest White House salary list.

She writes: "President Bush's most senior aides -- the ones who hold the coveted title of 'assistant to the president' -- recently received a $4,200 cost-of-living bump-up in compensation and now earn a top pay rate of $165,200, according to an internal White House list of staff salaries. . . .

"Those at the bottom of the White House staff pay scale -- the folks answering phones and responding to the president's mail, for example -- remain stuck at last year's pay floor of $30,000."

The liberal Think Progress blog came out with its list of the "four most overpaid White House staffers," by virtue of their job titles: Deborah Nirmala Misir, Ethics Advisor, $114,688; Erica M. Dornburg, Ethics Advisor, $100,547; Stuart Baker, Director for Lessons Learned, $106,641; Melissa M. Carson, Director of Fact Checking, $46,500.

And that prompted a particularly pointed floor speech by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.):

"Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now."

After suggesting a few, Emanuel noted the other positions highlighted by Think Progress and concluded: "Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."