THE EMAIL AND THE INTERNETS

GEORGE H.W. BUSH


When in doubt, blame the bloggers. That's former president Bush's thoughts on why the political climate has gotten so nasty. In an interview with plastic surgery maven Greta van Susteren, Bush pins the blame on the nasty attitude in Washington and in politics in general on the evil electronic media and the bloggers (read: average Americans who have an outlet to voice this disapproval for his son).

I mean, you go back in history and you’ll find that there was always adversarial politics. There was always gut fighting. And it’s probably a little worse now given the electronic media and the bloggers and all these kinds of things.

So, as is usually the case when it comes to assigning blame, it's always everyone else's fault and never a Bush's fault. Apparently their ability to deflect blame, regardless of mountains of evidence to the contrary, runs in the family.

Another thing that apparently runs in the family is a pathological predeliction for secrecy [transcript via Think Progress].

GRETA: You are a letter writer. Tons of letters.

H.W. BUSH: Not anymore. Because now I use the email. And the computer. And I find that I don’t do near as much writing as I used to, letters as I used to. I don’t save them. And I am worried about that a little bit not that I have that much more to say, but I think it’s too bad in a way that email will detract from the historical record of presidents. I don’t think that the President Bush uses email.

BARBARA BUSH: He doesn’t.

H.W. BUSH: You worry about it. People are going to subpoena the email records and we are going to, you know, you’ve gotta prove that you were telling the truth and all this stuff. I mean, it’s gotten so adversarial that it’s ugly.

So, correspondence to and from a president will work to detract from the historical record? Am I the only one who finds that sort of confusing in a backwards sort of way? Though given how predisposed Bush Jr. is to telling the truth (see: lying to the media about Rumsfeld's resignation), I can see why he would strenuously avoid committing anything that would eventually be used against him. Unlike Nixon, I don't see Bush recording his conversations. But Sr. does have a point; it's a shame that Bush might actually have to prove that he's telling the truth from time to time. Those darn bloggers are just so unfair to expect their leaders not to lie to them and stuff. We bloggers are idealists like that.