GEORGE H.W. BUSH LASHES OUT AT CHENEY, RUMSFELD
Son defends aides yet isn’t spared in book
Former president George W. Bush is praising ex-aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — essentially defending them from criticism by his father, former president George H.W. Bush.
“I am proud to have served with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld,” the younger Bush said in a statement, adding that the former “did a superb job” as vice president and the latter “was an effective Secretary of Defense.”
The statement came after news reports that Bush’s father, former president George H.W. Bush, says in a new biography that Cheney and Rumsfeld illserved his son.
Discussing Cheney’s role in national security after 9/11, the elder Bush told biographer Jon Meacham that his son’s vice president “had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer. It just showed me that you cannot do it that way. The president should not have that worry.”
Rumsfeld also “served the president badly,” Bush says in the book Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Her
bert Walker Bush, which comes out Tuesday. “I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything.”
Rumsfeld had an equally harsh reaction to his old rival, telling NBC News on Thursday: “Bush 41 is getting up in years and misjudges Bush 43, who I found made his own decisions.”
The New York Times reported on the book Thursday, saying it provides the elder Bush’s voice “to sentiments that many long suspected he had harbored but kept private until now. While he continued to praise his son, he did (say) ... that the younger Mr. Bush was responsible for empowering Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld and was at times too bellicose in his language,” the Times wrote.
Referring to his son, George H.W. Bush said, “I do worry about some of the rhetoric that was out there — some of it his ... and some of it the people around him.”
The first President Bush also said that the second President Bush is responsible for his own record, with or without an aggressive vice president.
“The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own State Department,” Bush said. “I think they overdid that. But it’s not Cheney’s fault. It’s the president’s fault.”