Bush Wins Again

"Bush quickly corrected himself. 'APEC summit,' he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

"The president's next goof went uncorrected -- by him anyway. Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Bush called them 'Austrian troops.'

"That one was fixed for him. Though tapes of the speech clearly show Bush saying 'Austrian,' the official text released by the White House switched it to 'Australian.'"

And that wasn't all.

Reuters reports: "Upon finishing his speech, Bush took the wrong way off-stage and, looking slightly perplexed, had to be re-directed by Howard to a centre-stage exit.

"But not before a veteran White House correspondent seized the opportunity to ask Bush whether there had been any new message in his speech. Apparently misunderstanding the question, he bristled and asked, 'Haven't you been listening to my past speeches?' before turning away."

More Comedy

Maura Reynolds writes in the Los Angeles Times: "A comedy team impersonating a Canadian government delegation -- and one member wearing an Osama bin Laden costume -- breached security cordons around the hotel where President Bush is staying, embarrassing Australian authorities. . . .

"The comedy stunt, by an Australian state television program called 'The Chaser's War on Everything,' succeeded in needling authorities, who pledged even stronger security measures."

Talking Back to Bush

Tom Raum writes for the Associated Press: "In a testy public exchange Friday with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, President Bush said the United States would consider the Korean War formally ended only when North Korea halts its nuclear weapons program."

Raum calls it "a before-the-cameras back-and-forth that was remarkable in the diplomatic world of understatement and subtlety. . . .

"Roh pushed Bush to be 'clearer' about his position on an official end to the 1950-53 Korean War. The two Koreas were divided by the conflict, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, meaning they still remain technically at war."

Here's the video; here's the transcript.

Bush started off by describing the private talk that had just concluded as a "very friendly and frank discussion about important matters."

He noted that "I reaffirmed our government's position that when the North Korean leader fully discloses and gets rid of his nuclear weapons programs, that we can achieve a new security arrangement in the Korean Peninsula, that we can have the peace that we all long for."

When it was Roh's turn, he spoke directly to Bush: "I think I might be wrong -- I think I did not hear President Bush mention the -- a declaration to end the Korean War just now. Did you say so, President Bush?"

Bush replied: "I said it's up to Kim Jong-il as to whether or not we're able to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War. He's got to get rid of his weapons in a verifiable fashion. And we're making progress toward that goal. It's up to him."

Roh didn't let it drop: "I believe that they are the same thing, Mr. President. If you could be a little bit clearer in your message," he said, to nervous laughter from the U.S. delegation and a look of annoyance from Bush.

Bush: "I can't make it any more clear, Mr. President. We look forward to the day when we can end the Korean War. That will end -- will happen when Kim Jong-il verifiably gets rid of his weapons programs and his weapons.

"Thank you, sir. "

The White House tried to downplay the exchange. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said "there was clearly something lost in translation during the photo op."

At a press briefing afterwards, officials faced many questions about the incident. Said spokeswoman Dana Perino: "I think that there might be just a little bit of over-interpretation of what happened in there. I can tell you, they had a very warm meeting. The President made a clear statement of his support for ending the Korean War once and for all. And both leaders agreed on that. And there was no tension in the meeting, there was no tension after the meeting amongst staff or amongst the leaders. And I think that everyone is trying to make a little bit too much of it.

" Q Well, Dana, when we hear the President saying -- what, three times -- 'thank you, sir,' 'thank you, sir,' to those of us who have covered him that sure sounded tense.

" MS. PERINO: The President was not tense. I think the President made it -- reiterated his statement. You heard it, you can go back, he said the exact same thing three times. And I think that that was enough. And he did, too."

Bush and the Beijing Olympics

Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in the New York Times: " President Bush has accepted an invitation from President Hu Jintao of China to attend the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, a move that drew condemnation from human rights advocates and a Republican member of Congress, who are calling for a boycott of the Games.

"Mr. Hu extended the invitation -- reiterating an offer he had made -- during a private meeting with Mr. Bush here late on Thursday, on the eve of an economic meeting of leaders of Asian nations. Their 90-minute talk touched on a variety of issues, including climate change, the recent recalls of tainted toys made in China and a new plan for a hot line to link the Chinese and American militaries.

"But it was the Olympics announcement that grabbed the most attention."

Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post: "Sensitive to concerns about China's human rights record, a Bush aide added a caveat to Bush's acceptance. The president would be attending 'for the sports' and not to make any political statement, said James F. Jeffrey, a deputy national security adviser."

So Gonzales Was Pushed?

From chief of staff Bolten's talk with Lehrer on PBS on Wednesday:

"JIM LEHRER: New subject. There have been several published reports that it was you who finally convinced President Bush that Alberto Gonzales should go as attorney general. Is that true?

"JOSHUA BOLTEN: Attorney General Gonzales came to his own conclusion, and I think it was a courageous decision on his part that the president reluctantly accepted. I think Alberto came to the realization that, as unfair as the attacks on him over the last several months have been, that at some point you need to let that unfairness, in a sense, stand and step aside for the good of the department, which I know he loves and wants to succeed, more than concern about what might happen to him personally.

"JIM LEHRER: Same or similar circumstances lead to the resignation of Karl Rove?

"JOSHUA BOLTEN: No. This was completely an independent decision by Karl about the time that he wanted to leave. . . . And that's a circumstance in which the timing was not dictated by any sort of outside forces. That was completely up to Karl."

Book Watch

Tim Rutten reviews two of the latest Bush books for the Los Angeles Times: "Robert Draper's 'Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush' . . . is a shrewdly observed and very engagingly written exploration of the president's enigmatic personality. Charlie Savage's 'Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy' is a gifted reporter's exposition of how and why the Bush administration has conducted itself and of that conduct's disturbing legacy.

"Read together, these two books give a fascinating account of how Bush's character has shaped his presidency and of how a radical and historically revisionist theory of presidential powers provided the perfect tool with which to do that."

Wayne Slater writes in the Dallas Morning News about Draper's book: "An early burst of publicity seemed to cast Mr. Bush in a bad light. But a thorough reading suggests the book is exactly what the White House had in mind when it granted extraordinary access to Mr. Draper, a reporter for GQ magazine. . . .

"In this take on the Bush presidency, it was administrator Paul Bremer who dismantled the Iraqi army contrary to the president's expectations. It was Chief Justice John Roberts who recommended Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court (a claim Justice Roberts denies).

"The George W. Bush depicted in the book Dead Certain is the consummate leader, cool, transcendent, in-charge. . . .

"For Mr. Bush and his longtime political guru Karl Rove, the book is a first step in framing the legacy of a president who famously claims not to be thinking about his legacy."

And Slate has a fascinating excerpt from "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration," the new book from former top Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith.

(See my Wednesday column for more on Goldsmith and David S. Addington, the redoubtable Cheney aide at the center of the Bush White House's most extreme overreaches.)

Writes Goldsmith: "Addington once expressed his general attitude toward accommodation when he said, 'We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop.' He and, I presumed, his boss viewed power as the absence of constraint. These men believed that the president would be best equipped to identify and defeat the uncertain, shifting, and lethal new enemy by eliminating all hurdles to the exercise of his power. They had no sense of trading constraint for power. It seemed never to occur to them that it might be possible to increase the president's strength and effectiveness by accepting small limits on his prerogatives in order to secure more significant support from Congress, the courts, or allies. They believed cooperation and compromise signaled weakness and emboldened the enemies of America and the executive branch. When it came to terrorism, they viewed every encounter outside the innermost core of most trusted advisers as a zero-sum game that if they didn't win they would necessarily lose. . . .

"Addington's hard-line nonaccommodation stance always prevailed when the lawyers met to discuss legal policy issues in Alberto Gonzales' office. During these meetings, Gonzales himself would sit quietly in his wing chair, occasionally asking questions but mostly listening as the querulous Addington did battle with whomever was seeking to 'go soft.' It was Gonzales' responsibility to determine what to advise the president after the lawyers had kicked the legal policy matters around. But I only knew him to disagree with Addington once, on an issue I cannot discuss, and on that issue the president overruled Gonzales and sided with the Addington position."

Rosa Brooks writes in her Los Angeles Times opinion column on her "key takeaways" from Goldsmith's book: "Bush and Gonzales had little appetite for substance; Cheney's staff ruled the roost and insisted that the law was supposed to bend to their wishes; and top Cheney aides such as David Addington were every bit as contemptuous of their GOP colleagues in the executive branch as they were of Congress, the courts and their Democratic critics. . . .

"Like so many other recent accounts of life inside the bubble, Goldsmith's raises the question of how the Bush administration juggernaut lasted so long. From the outside, the administration looked powerful and dangerous, a finely tuned machine capable of rolling over any opposition. But it was hollow and illusory -- and on the inside, many knew it."

Cartoon Watch

Mike Luckovich on Bush's sock puppets; Ann Telnaes on Bush's coffers.