Cross Bush, Face Payback

[reprehensor]

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-bushs-hardball,0,4646621.story

March 27, 2004, 2:02 PM EST

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is playing supercharged hardball in going after his own former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke. It's a risky strategy that shows the single-mindedness of Bush and his re-election team in trying to deflect politically damaging criticism.

Loyalty is a hallmark of Bush's administration, with the president and his top lieutenants quick to turn on those who stray from the fold.

A week after a broadside that questioned Democratic rival John Kerry's commitment to U.S. troops and fitness to be president -- standard operating procedure for the general election campaign -- Bush's re-election machine unleashed a shock and awe campaign designed to discredit Clarke.

Bush's leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks is the guiding theme of his re-election campaign, intended to suggest the nation is safer with him as president. Clarke's claim that Bush ignored the threat from Osama bin Laden and waged a pointless war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein directly challenges that argument.

In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke predicted retribution from a White House "adept at revenge."

But Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, are essentially following the same game plan that the late Lee Atwater -- an early political mentor of Rove's -- used to get the first President Bush elected in 1988: define and undercut an opponent early with a fusillade of negative attacks.

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[acmavm]

1. bush* & rove have one big problem, Clarke is credible, they aren't.

n/t