the tindog coffeehouse

In keeping with this week’s “presidential exit interview” theme, I thought it would be good to take a look at President Bush’s interview with ABC’s Cynthia McFadden, which aired on Nightline earlier in the week.

The part of the interview that seems to be getting the most attention is when McFadden asks the President about his faith. While some of the answers are pretty good, there are a few that I disagree with.

Below are some of his responses and my comments on them. (And by the way, I’m sorry for the extremely long post here.)

Bush said he is often asked if he thinks he was chosen by God to be president.

“I just, I can’t go there,” he said. “I’m not that confident in knowing, you know, the Almighty, to be able to say, ‘Yeah, God wanted me of all the other people.’ My relationship [with God] is on a personal basis trying to become as closer to the Almighty as I possibly can get. And I’ve got a lot of problems. I mean, I got, you know, the ego … all the things that prevent me from being closer to the Almighty. So, I don’t analyze my relationship with the good Lord in terms of, well, you know, God has plucked you out or God wants you to do this. I know this: I know that the call is to better understand and live out your life according to the will of God.”

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… and sometimes life lives you.

How true.

National Review’s Jay Nordlinger had a chance to interview President Bush about his presidency and put a whole bunch of quotes from the interview into his column.

Here are a few of the more interesting ones, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

On the troop surge in Iraq:

“And I can’t remember the moment, but I know full well [National Security Adviser] Steve [Hadley] and I said, ‘We’re going to figure out and get to the bottom of this thing . . .’ And you’ve got to understand: With me, I’m thinking victory the whole time. And I fully understood the consequences of defeat — which are easier to explain, by the way, than the consequences of victory. And so we started to assess, and the different options started bubbling up, I guess, toward the end of the summer [’06] . . .

“The way it should work for a president on a decision this big is to make sure everybody has a chance to express themselves. I guess you could try to hastily make a decision of this magnitude and say, ‘This is the way it is.’ On the other hand, when you’re implementing a decision of this magnitude, where people’s lives would be at stake, it is important to give a lot of different stakeholders a chance to express their opinion. The president says, ‘It’s not working, we must assess, and what is it going to take to win?’

“And there were a lot of opinions during this period of time — a lot. Which is good for the president. You really don’t want homogenized decision-making. And opinions ranged from Get out, to Get out of Baghdad, step back, and hope the violence which will occur as a result of the vacuum doesn’t spill out.” Some people said, “Okay, some troops” — and eventually, “as a result of a lot of interagency working,” there were 30,000 additional troops: the surge. “Why? Because that’s what it would take to win, or to achieve the objective.”

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As Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison inches closer to officially running for Texas governor, the question becomes, when will she resign from the Senate? Paul Burka says sooner rather than later, in order to deprive Rick Perry of additional ammunition in the form of controversial Senate votes.

Between that and the fight to dislodge Tom Craddick from his role as Speaker of the House, 2009 is shaping up to be a very interesting year in Austin.

Gotta love Texas politics!

Having been rejected once after asking Congress for a $25 billion bailout, the Big 3 automakers are back, this time asking for… $34 billion?! (Funny how car salesmen negotiate, huh?)

But while 61% of Americans oppose bailing out GM, Ford, and Chrysler, the reality is that a bailout is inevitable.

Why? Because of the unions.

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As we were eating dinner tonight, Megan and Erin casually told me about the lockdown drill they had at school earlier. I knew they had drills like this, but it’s still jarring to hear your 7- and 5-year-olds describe them.

In the drill, they shut the classroom door and turn the lights off, then blackout the windows and stand quietly against the wall.

Truly scary stuff, considering the real-life tragedies that prompted the exercise.

I’m old enough to remember ducking under our desks in case of a nuclear war. (Still not sure how that would’ve done any good, but whatever.)

I guess this is just trading one fear for another.