White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten made his first appearance on Meet the Press yesterday. As ever, Tim Russert’s questions weren’t particularly tough or hard-hitting, it’s just that the positions he’s hired to defend are so illogical.
Here’s a review from Russert Watch on the Huffington Post:
Bolten’s debut on Meet the Press was a disaster. He was a quivering mass of lifeless tissues. Nothing more than a befuddled mouthpiece for the incomprehensible illogic of President Bush’s White House. Like Tony Snow and Dan Bartlett, he has an “oh crap, I have no idea what to do or say here — hhhheelllllp me!” look in his eye. It’s a look that most Republicans have these days, but especially so amongst the White House regulars.
On the war in Lebanon, Bolten aped the company line, relying on meaningless spin to stave off saying anything controversial or, heaven forfend, insightful or meaningful. But when the topic turned to the president’s veto of a bill to fund stem cell research, the going got weird:
[To] his credit, Russert really grilled Bolten on Tony Snow’s remarks referring to the embryonic stem cell research as “murder.”
Bolten refused to back his press secretary — the guy he was instrumental in hiring — by also using “murder.” It’d be nice to think that he didn’t back Snow’s remarks because embryonic stem cell research clearly is not murder. But that’s not why. I’m really not sure why he didn’t support his guy, but he didn’t. He did, however, praise the extremely cynical East Room ceremony in which the president announced his veto of the bill while being flipped off by a little girl behind him.
He also reiterated the president’s posture that he refuses to fund the destruction of “innocent life.” At the top of the show, Russert aired one of the president’s choice quotes on the issue: “This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others.”
Russert also pointed out the illogic of it all. These embryos will be destroyed anyway, why not use them to find a cure for lives that aren’t going to be flushed? Who’s going to adopt 400,000 frozen embryos?
