Bob Schieffer, George W. Bush, And The Echoes Of The Iraq War
Celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, CBS’s Face The Nation this week touted sit-down interviews with President Obama and former President George W. Bush. As expected, the Obama interview featured more policy questions, as well as queries about the president and the Democratic Party’s recent political failures.
By contrast, Bush, who’s promoting a biography he wrote about his father, was treated to softer questions from host Bob Schieffer, with a strong emphasis on Bush’s family and whether his younger brother Jeb will decide to run for president. Schieffer did raise questions about one key Bush administration decision — Bush’s defining policy of invading Iraq — though the queries seemed rather perfunctory on the CBS host’s part.
There was nothing especially scandalous about Schieffer’s decision to treat the former president differently than he did the sitting president, who, by definition, continues to face pressing issues and grapple with unforeseen crises. And yet, there was something noteworthy about the way Schieffer just tossed off Bush’s answers about the Iraq War and didn’t ask a single obvious follow-up question. The performance nicely captured the double standard that seems to have always existed between Bush and the Beltway press.
It’s the kind of casual dual standard that’s been in place for so many years, and has become so normal and accepted, that it barely register a response anymore. It’s to the point where most people don’t think it’s odd that Bush’s old golfing buddy is paid to lob him softball questions on a national news program.
It’s true. Bob Schieffer “struck up a golfing friendship with George W. Bush during the 1990s,” according to a 2004 Mother Jones article. Schieffer attended “dozens” of baseball games with Bush and even traveled down to baseball’s spring training season with the future president. In fact, the Face The Nation host once conceded that when it comes to Bush, “It’s always difficult to cover someone you know personally.”
Why the close Schieffer/Bush connection? Because Schieffer’s brother Tom helped make George W. Bush a very rich man. Tom Schieffer and Bush were both part of the ownership group that bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989, and as the team’s president Schieffer played a key role in making that investment a profitable one.(Bush invested $600,000 and earned a $25 million return just nine years later.) Bush then turned around and made Tom Schieffer the U.S. ambassador to Australia and then to Japan.
But these facts haven’t been discussed much in public over the years, and they certainly weren’t emphasized for Schieffer’s sit-down interview with Bush on Face The Nation. (Portions of the interview also aired on CBS Sunday Morning.) Instead, the CBS host allowed Bush to make nonsensical proclamations about the failed Iraq War; a conflict that continues to tax the U.S. Treasury and haunt our national security.
