by Peter Wehner
On “The Last Word,” MSNBC contributor Richard Wolffe, in the context of Speaker John Boehner asking President Obama to give his address to a Joint Session on a night other than the one during which a GOP presidential debate will be held, said this:
The interesting question is: What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the office of the president? Why do Republicans think this president is unpresidential and should dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008 or it could be, let’s face it, the color of his skin. This is an extraordinary reaction to a normal sequence of events.Funny, but I don’t recall the “veneer of respect that normally accompanies the office of the president” when the chief executive was a man named George W. Bush. During the Bush presidency, for example, George W. Bush was referred to by leading members of the Democratic Party as a “moral coward” (Vice President Al Gore ), as a “loser” and a “liar” who had “betrayed his country” (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), and who “week after week after week after week … told lie after lie after lie after lie” (Senator Edward Kennedy). But in a remarkable feat of self-control, Wolffe was able to keep his moral outrage in check.
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