Two stories today illustrate how political calculations drive everything in the Bush White House.
In the first, administration officials all but admit that they scheduled the State of the Union speech to divert attention from the Iowa caucus outcome:
[The] State of the Union address, which White House officials scheduled for Tuesday night, only 24 hours after Iowa, to draw attention from the Democratic victor, a Republican close to the Bush campaign said.
“Was it planned?” the Republican said. “Yes. The fact that the Iowa caucus was going to be held on a certain date was not unknown to people in the White House.”
The underlying strategy, the Republican said, was not to steal all the thunder from the Democrats, which even another “axis of evil” State of the Union address was unlikely to do, but rather to change the subject.
This type of maneuver, though revealing, isn’t that big a deal. In the grand scheme of things, the Iowa caucus results won’t have much shelf life anyway. As soon as it’s over the focus shifts to New Hampshire. Moreover the move is largely a trade off because it comes at the expense of more State of the Union publicity.
In contrast, this move is outrageous:
President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, virtually guaranteeing that the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials said last week.
A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed the panel that they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said.
The administration has deliberately obstructed and delayed the 9/11 investigative effort since its inception, and now that the commission is running up against its deadline, Republicans refuse to allow it the time necessary to complete a through investigation.
Why? Because rather than getting to the truth of what lead to 9/11 so it won’t be repeated, Republicans want to get that dirty laundry out of the public consciousness as soon as possible so they can hold a rousing political party just up the street from ground zero. That’s order of the Republican party’s priorities.
Disgusting.