It is pretty common for Presidents to take a certain amount of credit for a bill they are about to sign even if they opposed this or that portion of it. Usual practice, however, is for them to take bills they don't like and sign them unceremoniously, out of the view of those who might remind them they once opposed the bill about to become law. Never one to express anything like a conscience,
Pres. Bush not only signed a bill that included Sen. Jim Webb's new GI Bill, he praised the legislation. There's nothing wrong with that, obviously, except for the fact that he actively and publicly worked against the bill's passage, insisting that it would deter re-enlistment and reward shorter service. On
Countdown yesterday, Sen. Webb said the following (via Think Progress):
“I think it’s safe to say there was a good deal of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. It just didn’t include the administration,” Webb said with a chuckle. He added that Bush “blew it”:
I think George W. Bush made a real bad mistake in terms of our trying to show full respect for military service. I think he blew it.
On the one hand, there is nothing surprising about this. As I say, Presidents have been known to say a n ice word or two about a bill some of the provisions of which they opposed. In this case, however, when Bush goes all out to praise
his own Administration's efforts to pass a bill it actively tried to undermine, we have a further example of the kind of moral nihilism practiced by the folks in charge.
