Hapless Harry Rides Again

The Artist Formerly Known as Sprout lets us know that our old buddy Harry Reid isn't showing that much remorse about his comments regarding the President last week...

In a news conference, Reid was asked if his comment about Bush would make it more difficult to negotiate with Republicans.

"I tell people how I feel about things. I don't try to hide how I feel," Reid said.

"Maybe my choice of words was improper, and I have indicated that maybe they were, but I want everyone here, I repeat, to know I'm going to continue to call things the way that I see them, and I think this administration has done a very, very bad job for this nation and the world."

No, Harry, your choice of words wasn't just improper, it was inaccurate. It's rather difficult to describe George W. Bush as a "loser" -- plenty of folks on the left have hammered him as an idiot (which we'd dispute), but loser would be tough to support by any measure.

What's even better is that Reid felt the need to qualify the fact that his comments were improper... "maybe." Uh, no, Harry -- they either are improper, or they aren't. This is the sort of pathetic doublespeak that people hate from politicians. Don't qualify it -- just say that you were wrong.

Next, I suppose I should be grateful that President Bush's job description now also includes doing a good job for the world. At least Reid placed the nation ahead of the world. But telling it like it is, or "calling things as I see them", might require more than mere demagoguery. Here's his comments from Friday where he expanded on the "loser" line...

"He's driving this country into bankruptcy," Reid said, referring to the deficit. "He's got us in this intractable war in Iraq where we now have about 1,600 American soldiers dead and another 15,000 injured."

Ah, yes. He's the one driving the train, with no assistance from Congress on the budget deficit. I like how Reid referenced "bankruptcy" as where we're heading when he and his party think it's somehow wrong for President Bush to describe Social Security as bankrupt. Of course Reid and the Dems have been full of great suggestions on how we can trim the budget deficit via spending cuts. Oh, wait, they just want to raise taxes on "the rich" to trim that budget deficit -- by defining "the rich" with the same broad swath activist judges use in interpreting the Constitution.

As for the "intractable war" in Iraq, is Afghanistan intractable as well? We lost approximately 400,000 U.S. soldiers in World War II, which lasted nearly two years longer (for the U.S.) than Iraq has presently. Good thing Reid was only four years old in 1943, or Roosevelt might have been hearing complaints about his "intractable" war.