Partisan Squabble Erupts Over Bin Laden’s Extermination

You’d think that the killing of bin Laden, a success story for the Obama administration built upon an intelligence infrastructure laid down by the Bush administration, would offer a fine opportunity for bi-partisan healing. For a moment there was a flickering when President Obama, in his Sunday night showstopper, said, “Tonight let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11”. But it was not to be.

It did not help foster unity that, while giving repeated credit to the "heroic work of our military and our counter-terrorism professionals", Obama gave not a word of credit to the Bush administration. That he then met with SEAL team 6 and spoke before servicemen returning from Afghanistan at at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, was part of a president’s job description. But it also did not help that, although saying on “60 Minutes” that he did not intend to “spike the football”, he had already done exactly that by going to Ground Zero in New York for a victory lap with New York City firefighters.

In seeming retaliation for Obama hogging the ball, out came the Bush troops en masse. Almost a dozen fanned out to the Sunday talk shows to claim some credit of their own. Andrew Card said that Obama had reason to be proud but showed it too much. (Pundits on the left immediately showed photos of Bush in a flight suit on the carrier Abraham Lincoln and the “Mission Accomplished” banner). Dick Cheney said it was “what we call ‘enhanced interrogation’” that was key. John Yoo credited “policies on interrogation and wiretapping”. Douglas Feith cited “rendition”. Condoleezza Rice said Bush “had to make some very, very hard calls that frankly helped to set this up”. Karl Rove credited “decisions made under Bush that made Sunday night possible”.

Obama had asked George W. Bush to join him at Ground Zero, but Bush declined. Perhaps the ex-president thought it unseemly self-congratulation on Obama's part (with which we agree). Or perhaps the thinking was that Bush would seem to be tagging along, looking for credit. Better a TV blitz where his cohort could claim it for him.

Which was too bad. Given that the Ground Zero "celebration" did take place, would it not have been better to see both presidents side-by-side, each giving short mutually-congratulatory talks? That could have made the rest of the squabbling go away and restore, if only for moments, that "sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11”. Instead, even at this moment of signal triumph, we sunk into the same, corrosive animosity and bickering.