'Wartime President' MIA

[True_Blue]

By David Ignatius
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A23

What would a "wartime president" have done this week, as a bipartisan commission's public hearings on the Sept. 11 tragedy were being engulfed by political bickering?

I like to think that this hypothetical leader would have found a way to rise above the fray and unite the country: He would have embraced the commission's work, forthrightly admitted his own mistakes, sent his national security adviser to testify publicly -- and insisted that the security of the United States was too important to be buried in election-year squabbles.

President Bush and his White House handlers did pretty much the opposite. They fanned the flames of partisan debate; when asked awkward questions, they stonewalled; rather than testify before the cameras, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice spent part of her Wednesday afternoon dishing dirt to reporters about a commission witness who had criticized the president.

Bush flunked the test, in other words. Rather than working to bring the country together, the Bush team added to its nasty political divisions -- and allowed them to contaminate the terrorism commission's work.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25465-2004Mar25.html