Countdown

Head of the Class

Vol. VIII, No. 16
Posted on Tuesday June 26, 2007

Using audiences as a backdrop for political speeches is an old Washington trick that President George W. Bush has all but perfected. (How many speeches on Iraq have you seen with American troops seated behind the Commander-in-Chief?) No surprise then that at a reception honoring Presidential Scholars (an award given to the nation’s top graduating seniors), Bush was set to give a speech on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. The graduates, however, were not content to serve as backdrops. The Associated Press reports that a young woman presented the president with a letter signed by fifty of the students, writing “we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions…We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.”

Where’s Waldo? Not in Syria.

To commemorate International Refugee Day, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported on the devastating refugee crisis in Afghanistan. Problem was he couldn’t find it. The map which aired, shown at left, instead labeled Syria as Afghanistan. In his blog, television vet Bob Harris writes, “This is probably some graphics person’s error. But it certainly doesn’t make Anderson or the network look all that great-especially when they’re repeating the segment with neither a correction nor disclaimer.” Maybe the folks at CNN should take a geography class from our Presidential Scholars.

An Expensive Mistake

Last week Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) presidential campaign earned the ire of the Indian American community after circulating a memo referring to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) as Senator from “Punjab.” Obama described the memo as a “dumb mistake,” but Indian Americans did not take the affront lying down. According to the New York Daily News, community leaders hosted a reception for Clinton that raked in an impressive $2 million. We’ll bet that no campaign makes that mistake again.

The Elephants in the Room

In a speech last night on the Senate floor, Foreign Relations Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R-IN), one of President George W. Bush’s most prominent supporters, broke ranks with the president describing the current Iraq strategy as one which has “lost contact with our vital national security interests.” Lugar urged a “recalibrated” approach to Iraq that would “fit our domestic political conditions and the broader needs of U.S. national security.” Although critical of the Bush approach, he did not let his colleagues off the hook, saying “I speak to my fellow Senators, when I say that the President is not the only American leader who will have to make adjustments to his or her thinking. Each of us should take a step back from the sloganeering rhetoric and political opportunism that has sometimes characterized this debate.” In a section of the speech titled “The Elephants in the Room,” Lugar also spoke of the need for U.S. engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. “Progress in the Arab-Israeli conflict would not end the sectarian conflict in Iraq,” he said. “But it could restore credibility lost by the United States in the region.” Lugar is highly respected on both sides of the aisle and one would hope his speech could help create an environment where senators will begin debating policies in Iraq on their merits rather than hoping to score political points.