O'Neil backsliding
Via Pejman and the Corner, comes this:
Who saw Paul O'Neill on Today this morning? He's backtracking from all the Suskind-CBS hype attacking the president. He says he wishes he could retract his "blind and deaf" remarks, and says he'll vote for Bush in the fall because he doesn't see anyone else as "capable." With Katie as with Lesley Stahl, you see liberal reporters trying to put words in his mouth. The more he talks, the more it shows he doesn't fit their anti-Bush mold any more than he fit Bush's.
A commenter on Pejman's site had this to say:
Timing the wait until the first accusation that the Bush administration somehow 'got to' O'Neill on my... mark.
My current estimate: tempest in a teacup.
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Buckethead
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Being a touch over 100 pages
Being a touch over 100 pages into Suskind's book, I should have something informed to say in a day or two...
OK... so he backtracked on
OK... so he backtracked on some personal slanders. How about substance.
Does anyone else get the impression that O'Neill just figured out that he's f**ed with the wrong marines?
I read an interesting comment
I read an interesting comment, which I now forget exactly where I saw it, but the substance was this: DiLulio and O'Neil both appeared to make really critical comments of Bush, which the press dutifully broadcast everywhere. Both former administration members immediately backtracked, and said that they don't hate Bush, and that generally they were misrepresented.
In both cases, the conduit for the original, sensational stuff was Suskind.
Makes you wonder.
Doesn't make me wonder a bit.
Doesn't make me wonder a bit. O'Neil hasn't done anything other than indicate that he regrets a couple of unnecessarily personal remarks. The book is a couple hundred pages long; regretting a few sentences doesn't change the meaning of it.
Once again -- attacking the man instead of the argument.
I plan on writing a clear liberal assessment of Bush's presidency so far. I will be using a most excellent source of information for this -- the white house site, which contains the text of every official press conference given so far. We do need to rely on Fleischer and Mclellan's conferences, as Bush has given fewer interviews than any President in modern history. The man just doesn't want to speak for himself.
Johno responds to Pejman's
Johno responds to Pejman's commenter...
And why should that be bad,
And why should that be bad, wrong, or unexpected?
I don't even know if anybody "got to" O'neill in the sense of a midnight visit to his home by shadowy figures. Sounds rather Hollywood.
Rather, I expect that over the last few days O'Neill has had the opportunity to watch contacts grow cold, calls go unreturned, and an ad hominem media campaign with the Rove stamp all over it ramp up against him. It's just sinking in that he's in for a long painful 2004.