Not going to be much of a diary. I just saw this NYT article and didn't see a discussion thread. [EDIT: try this link instead. Hopefully the Seattle Times doesn't have a paywall policy....]
In a nutshell, GHW Bush has given a series of interviews to an author named Jon Meacham, who has a book coming out next week. And boy howdy, does 41 have some things he wants to get off his chest. This is a Read The Whole Thing kind of article, for sure. I can only quote 3 grafs, so here's a selection:
At 91 and in the twilight of a long and storied public life, the first President Bush evidently felt free to express views he had long suppressed in the interest of family harmony. Mr. Cheney, he said, was “very hard-line” and too eager to “use force to get our way”; Mr. Rumsfeld was an “arrogant fellow” full of “swagger.” He used the same phrase, “iron-ass,” to describe both men.
In the new book, the first President Bush expresses his love and support for his son and sticks by his decisions to go to war in Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. But he gently chides his son for “hot rhetoric” like his “axis of evil” speech, and says that the real responsibility for the way Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld operated belonged to the president. “The buck stops there,” he said.
The elder Mr. Bush opened up to Mr. Meacham in a series of interviews from 2006 to 2015 in which he spoke more candidly than many politicians would. He described his youth, when he “lusted” after pretty girls, including a couple who “had nice racks.” He also mused about his friend Bill Clinton’s marriage. “I don’t feel close to Hillary at all,” Mr. Bush said, “but I do to Bill and I can’t read their relationship even today.”
Quick takes....
"Iron-ass" has a nice ring to it.
Yet another major headache for Jeb!, who is caught up in the back-and-forth. If he wasn't already toast, this is definitely not going to help.
I hope the Beltway media gets excited about this and decides to pester all the individuals named for a couple weeks. Bush 41 taking shots at not just the architects of the Iraq folly, but at ignorant, bellicose, dissembling rhetoric they all fell for like "Axis Of Evil." It's juicy stuff, all of it. And this is coming on the heels of the speakership debacle in the House. GOP civil war continues, much to the relief of the rest of the world....
There is so much to unpack here, I don't even know where to start. Any one of these things that he said would be newsworthy on their own. And here is, backing up a dumptruck full of schadenfreude and dropping it in our laps. Wow.
