You say ‘worst president ever’; I say toe-mah-toe

The always enlightening Salon War Room plays a game of "he said – douche said" with the Interloper and key members of his administration…and boy is it fun. Or sickening. I really can't decide.

The White House said that the president's prime-time 9/11 anniversary speech wouldn't be a "political" one, and, by the standards of this administration, it wasn't. The president avoided calling his political opponents "appeasers," an argument Dick Cheney reprised in his own anniversary remarks earlier in the day, and he didn't argue, as Cheney did over the weekend, that terrorists are "encouraged" when Americans debate the future of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

…As a candidate, George W. Bush called himself a "uniter, not a divider," someone who would "refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another." As president, Bush declared that you're either "with us" or "with the terrorists," and his administration has made it clear over the past five years that while foreign governments only sometimes have to make that either/or choice, the American people always do.

Two weeks after 9/11, the president's then press secretary told Americans that they "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Five years later, his secretary of defense equates critics of the war in Iraq with Nazi appeasers, his secretary of state compares them with Civil War-era slavery supporters, and his vice president -- never a man of metaphor -- says that the basic Democratic act of voting for a candidate who wants to see the troops redeployed comes perilously close to treason.

Got all that? War opponents are not enemy appeasers…except when they oppose the war. And all Americans are united regardless of party affiliation…except anyone who doesn't agree with the president. And we all need to choose our words carefully…except when we're ruthlessly slandering anyone who stands against us.

I know its all par for the course, but I just thought it needed to be said again. We need to remember these hypocritical words and deeds come November because, as a not-so-wise man once said, "fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."