Webb to Shake Bush’s Hand?
The Richmond Times-Dispatch talks of Jim Webb’s silliness on Iraq, but argues that Senate Democrats can work with the Administration on other key issues:
Yet despite their different postures, there could be room for compromise between Bush and Webb. There is no reason the various players cannot improve America’s health care system — its health insurance and payment system, to be precise. Bush has extended a hand to congressional Democrats. Will Webb and his colleagues shake it? We shall see.
According to a transcript from a subsequent interview that was leaked to me, such hand-shaking plans are off to a rocky start:
TIMES-DISPATCH: The Times-Dispatch has called on you and your colleagues to shake President Bush’s extended hand and help fix our nation’s health insurance and payment system. Will you?
WEBB: A lot people lost their hands in Iraq. Three thousand soldiers, and counting, have lost even more.
TIMES-DISPATCH: Err… um … that’s nice. Well, actually it’s not nice at all, but that’s beside the point. My question wasn’t about hands in general, but about Bush’s in particular. Will you shake it?
WEBB: Just yesterday my boy called me from Iraq. He said some of the locals were shaking in fear. It’s not healthy, and America will have to pay for years to come, all because George W. Bush wasn’t prescient enough in 2003 to figure out what a brilliant guy I was at the time.
TIMES-DISPATCH: That’s not what I asked. What I asked was, will you shake the President’s hand?
WEBB: I think that is between me and my hand.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:13 am
Cognitive Dissonance On Iraq War…
It is a uniquely American tableau. Nowhere else in the world can one imagine the scene being played out in quite this way. Up on Capitol Hill politicians duck life and death decisions with oily rhetoric designed to cover……