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6 The Sheridan Press, Friday, May 16, 2008
Bush appeasement jab
brings quick Obama retort
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama
accused President Bush of “a false political
attack” Thursday after Bush warned in Israel
against appeasing terrorists — early salvos
in a general election campaign that’s already
blazing even as the Democratic front-runner
tries to sew up his party’s nomination.
The White House denied Bush had targeted
Obama, who said the Republican
commander in chief’s intent was obvious.
In short order, the controversy spilled
across the presidential campaign.
John McCain, the Republican nominee
in waiting, said Obama was showing
“naiveté and inexperience and lack of judgment”
in his willingness to meet with U.S.
foes.
Hillary Rodham Clinton then called Bush’s original
comments “offensive and outrageous, especially in light
of his failures in foreign policy.”
As the workday began stateside, Bush gave a speech
to Israel’s Knesset in which he spoke of the president of
Iran, who has called for the destruction of the U.S. ally.
Then, the president said: “Some seem to believe that we
should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if
some ingenious argument will persuade them they have
been wrong all along.”
“We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi
tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator
declared: ’Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all
this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to
call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement,
Barack
Obama
Presidential
Hopeful
which has been repeatedly discredited by
history,” Bush added.
With the president abroad and those seeking
to succeed him campaigning at home, the
transcontinental tiff signaled the early direction
of the general election. Bush seemed to
assume the traditional lame-duck presidential
role in trying to help the Republican nomineein-waiting,
and Obama tried to maneuver for
advantage — and to show strength — while
on the cusp of clinching the Democratic nomination.
McCain played his political role as well in
tandem with Obama, notable for two White
House hopefuls who are campaigning for a
bipartisan governing approach free of the
often divisive discourse in Washington.
By tradition, partisan politics comes to a halt when a
U.S. president is on foreign soil, and Bush’s remarks led
Obama to quickly cry foul. The first-term Illinois senator
responded to the comments as if they were criticism of his
position that as president he would be willing to personally
meet with Iran’s leaders and those of other regimes the
United States has deemed rogue.
“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the
Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence
to launch a false political attack,” Obama said in a statement
his aides distributed. “George Bush knows that I
have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the
president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy
and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American
people or our stalwart ally Israel.
Clinton scolds McCain
for opposing farm bill
BATH, S.D. (AP) — Hillary
Rodham Clinton scolded John
McCain on Thursday for opposing
the farm bill, attempting to maintain
the sense that she
is already competing
against the certain
Republican presidential
nominee even as
her chances for winning
the Democratic
nomination dim.
As she chatted up
rural South Dakotans,
Clinton largely ignored
Hillary
Clinton
Presidential
Hopeful
Democratic rival
Barack Obama, who
continued to gain
ground in delegates
needed to clinch the
nomination and picked up a
sought-after endorsement from
former Sen. John Edwards this
week.
Clinton noted that President
Bush has said he will veto the farm
bill, which Congress passed
Thursday. McCain also has said he
would veto the bill if he were president.
“They’re like two sides of the
same coin, and it doesn’t amount
to much change, does it?” the New
York senator said. “I believe saying
no to the farm bill is saying no
to rural America.”
Bush and McCain both say the
bill, which boosts farm
subsidies and includes
more money for food
stamps, is fiscally irresponsible
and too generous
to wealthy corporate
farmers.
“When Bear
Stearns needed assistance,
we stepped in
with a $30 billion
package. But when our
farmers need help, all
they get from Senator
McCain and President
Bush is a veto threat,”
Clinton said.
Obama applauded the bill’s
passage in a statement released by
his campaign, saying the measure
was “far from perfect,” but “with
so much at stake, we cannot make
the perfect the enemy of the good.”
The Illinois senator also chided
McCain and Bush for “saying no
to America’s farmers and ranchers,
no to energy independence, no to
the environment, and no to millions
of hungry people.”
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