[Iowa-dx] An interesting story if it is accurate

[Richard Johnson]

http://www.examiner.com/a-953145~Bush_quietly_advising_Hillary_Clinton__top=
_Democrats.html

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Bush quietly advising Hillary Clinton, top Democrats =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09 President Bush is said to be advising top Democrat=
s for the
upcoming 2008 elections, says Bill Sammon, the Chief White House
Correspondent for The Examiner. =09=09=09=09=09=09=09 =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=
 =09=09=09=09=09=09=09 =09Bill Sammon,
The Examiner
2007-09-24 23:33:00.0
Current rank: # 1 of 5,667 =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09 =09=09=09

Washington, D.C. -                                        =09=09=09=09=09=
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President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary
Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can
effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president. In an
interview for the new book "The Evangelical President," White House
Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has "been urging candidates:
'Don't get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you
end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.' "

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that "even
a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate
presence there."

"Especially if it's a Democrat," the chief of staff told The Examiner
in his West Wing office. "He wants to create the conditions where a
Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it
out."

To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through
aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event
of a Democratic victory in November 2008.

"It's different being a candidate and being the president," Bush said
in an Oval Office interview. "No matter who the president is, no
matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously
consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East,
particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then
begin to understand the need to continue to support the young
democracy."

To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror
programs so they can be used by the next president.

"Look, I'd like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a
lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is," Bush said.
"And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same
data I've been looking at, and come to their own conclusion."

As an example, Bush cited his detainee program, which allows him to
keep enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay while they await
adjudication. Bush is unmoved by endless criticism of the program
because he says his successor will need it.

"I specifically talked about it so that a candidate and/or president
wouldn't have to deal with the issue," he said. "The next person has
got the opportunity to analyze the utility of the program and make his
or her decision about whether or not it is necessary to protect the
homeland. I suspect they'll find that it is necessary. But my only
point to you is that it was important for me to lay it out there, so
that the politics wouldn't enter into whether or not the program ought
to survive beyond my period."

The Examiner asked Bush why Democratic candidates such as Clinton and
Barack Obama, who routinely lambaste his handling of Iraq, should take
his advice.

"First of all, I expect them to criticize me. That's one way you get
elected in the Democratic primary, is to criticize the president,"
Bush replied. "I don't expect them to necessarily take advice from me.
I would expect their insiders to at least get a perspective about how
we see things."

He added: "We have an obligation to make sure that whoever is
interested, they get our point of view, because you want somebody
running for president to at least understand all perspectives, apart
from the politics."

Besides, Bush suggested that Clinton and Obama just might benefit from
his advice.

"If I were a candidate running for president in a complex world that
we're in, I would be asking my national security team to touch base
with the White House just to at least listen about plans, thoughts,"
he said.

So far, Bush has been encouraged by the fact that Democratic
candidates are preserving enough wiggle room in their anti-war
rhetoric to enable them to keep at least some troops in Iraq.

"If you listen carefully, there are Democrats that say, 'Well, there
needs to be some kind of presence,'" Bush said.

A senior White House official said the administration did not put much
stock in pledges by Democratic presidential candidates to swiftly end
the Iraq war if elected.

"Well, first of all, if you're a presidential candidate," the official
said, "you're able to [finesse] the public posturing that you may be
required to do, or that you fall into doing.

"The other thing is, they are being advised by smart people," the
official said. "We've got colleagues here on the staff who have good
communications with some of the thinkers on that side.

"And there is a recognition by most of them that there has to be a
long-term presence by the United States if we hope to avoid America
being brought back into the region in a very precarious way, at a
point where all-out resources are required."

One topic discussed by the White House and Democratic presidential
campaigns is whether such a long-term presence should be inside Iraq,
as Clinton prefers, or just outside, as Democratic candidate John
Edwards has suggested.

Asked by The Examiner whether the Democrats were reluctant to have
private contacts with the administration, the White House official
replied: "No, I think they sort of welcome conversation."

Besides, he said, Democrats understand the negative consequences of
moving too quickly to reverse Bush's Iraq policy. The official noted
that in the wake of Vietnam, anti-war Democrats "suffered for
20-some-odd years because they were identified as the party, when it
came to national security, of being weak."

"If I were a Democrat, I would not want to be in a place where I was
forcing us to withdraw in '08," he said. "It's an election year and
any bad consequences would immediately be on their head.

"One of two things will happen if a Democrat gets elected president,"
he said. "They will either have to withdraw U.S. troops in order to
remain true to the rhetoric =97 in which case, any consequences in the
aftermath fall on their heads. Or they have to break their word, in
which case they encourage fratricide on the left of their party. Now
that's a thorny issue to work through."

Vice President Dick Cheney was philosophical about the possibility of
a Democratic president fundamentally reversing the policies that he
and Bush have worked so hard to implement in Iraq.

"It's the nature of the business, in a sense," he shrugged during an
interview in his West Wing office. "I mean, you get two terms. We were
fortunate to get two terms. And I think we'll increasingly see a lot
of emphasis on deciding who the next occupant of the Oval Office is
going to be."

bsammon@dcexaminer.com

About 'The Evangelical President'

The articles in this series are adapted from "The Evangelical
President," a book appearing this week from Regnery Publishing. Author
Bill Sammon, The Examiner's Senior White House correspondent, reports
on how President Bush is evangelical not just about his deeply held
Christian beliefs, but also about the liberation of Iraq and the
broader war against terrorism. Sammon interviewed Bush, Vice President
Cheney and their closest confidantes about the president's religion
and its impact on public policy. Sammon is the author of four previous
books on the presidency, all New York Times bestsellers.

Read other stories by Bill Sammon.

Examiner