Mark Ambinder is reporting that the White House sought to “get” Jimmy Carter, not Barack Obama, in George W. Bush’s speech yesterday. He’s wrong. What Ed Gillespie actually said was that the White House anticipated that the passage in question might be interpreted as an attack on Carter, not that the White House intended it as such. And later, when Gillespie was asked this question directly, he said that the White House went so far as to change the language so as to avoid targeting Carter.
This is typical — both of the White House and the reporters who cover it. The White House needn’t have changed a thing in the president’s remarks. Jimmy Carter met with Hamas. Barack Obama has advocated direct meetings, without preconditions, with individuals who head terrorist states. As far as I’m concerned, the president could have named them both and would have been well within his rights to do so. The setting, an address to the Knesset on the 60th Anniversary of Israel’s founding, would have made such a comment inappropriate. But he would have be right on the substance. Despite the plain language of Bush’s speech and Gillespie’s statement, reporters cannot wrench themselves away from the narrative — largely false in my view — that this White House routinely trashes its opponents unfairly. UPDATE: Ambinder provides more context in this post, in which he cites two White House reporters who say White House officials have named Obama and Carter in background interviews. That’s not what Gillespie said but it’s interesting nonetheless. I guess my takeaway is that Bush should have done this on the record in a different setting. It’s a fight he wins just by having it — but the White House isn’t up for much fighting these days.
