To Tell the Truth

Howard Kurtz ran a nice piece in today’s Washington Post that details the Bush administration’s reticence to release potentially damaging information. Kurtz includes more than one jab at and an unflattering photo of a certain White House fat head, which alone was worth the price of admission.

The article included what I always find particularly refreshing – negative statements by former Republican cronies:

Ari Fleischer, Bush's former press secretary, says Cheney had "a responsibility to the public and a duty to disclose" the accident on the night it happened. "This is the definition of news." Fleischer says that White House correspondents "are justified in being upset…”

and

"The sooner you put a spotlight on bad information, the sooner it gets cleaned up," says Torie Clarke, a former spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Every minute, or in this case hours, you spend defending why you didn't get out word about the hunting accident are minutes and hours wasted. . . . This is not my cousin in southwestern Pennsylvania having a hunting accident. It's the vice president of the United States."

In the interest of equal time, Kurtz felt compelled to give the administration a chance to defend its actions; of course, officials did not hesitate to adamantly refuse to admit wrong doing and instead offer pathetic excuses:

The White House says it is a mistake to lump together different controversies. "We don't try to keep things from the press for the purpose of annoying the press," says communications director Nicolle Wallace…Of the hunting mishap, Wallace says: "It was a personally painful experience, as the vice president has said, where he fired his gun and hurt his friend." The
Katrina correspondence was withheld because "the president's priority is to preserve his ability to get candid advice." As for the Abramoff photos, Wallace says Bush's desire was "not to throw flames on a politically charged story" that remains under investigation.

Should it have to fall to PatRow to remind the White House communications director that the president’s priority should not, in fact, be “to preserve his ability to get candid advice,” but to preserve the integrity of this country and his once esteemed office? When did protecting his ass become the commander in chief #1 focus?

Did I hear someone say January 20, 2000?