Robert Schlesinger

McCain Adviser Holtz-Eakin Blasts Bush Administration on Editing Climate Change

January 27, 2009 RSS Feed Print

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

The New American Foundation had an interesting panel this morning on "Repairing the Republican Brand." I'll blog a bit more on it later on, but one comment at the end particularly struck me. The panelists were asked about the Bush-Cheney (or maybe that should be Cheney-Bush) imperial presidential doctrines—not letting White House staff testify before Congress, etc.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, most recently the senior policy adviser for the McCain presidential campaign, made an interesting comment about the Bush administration's practice of rewriting, for example, climate change-related documents: "I don't think there's anything with the Bush administration's censoring of documents that has helped them make their case for their stance on climate change," Holtz-Eakin said. "It's a disgrace. Have the information out, have the debate, and win on the merits. Don't win on the editing process."

Like I said, more later.

Tags:
global warming,
energy policy and climate change,
Bush administration

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caddaatkin of ID 12:28PM July 05, 2009

I suppose it was a standard operating procedure for the Rove-Cheney Administration to edit facts on all sorts of foreign and domestic policy issues. The Bush Administration made one disasterous and anti-pragmatic decision after another. It is unfortunate that fine individuals like Senator McCain and Governor Palin were successfully tied to this corrupt, pro-big government, irrersponsible, fiscally disasterous failure of an administration. At least Bush put the Mexico City Gag in place to restrict abortions and appointed some good judges. The same cannot be said to his Justice Department that was as activist and broad constructionist as any activist liberal.

If the Republicans want to move forward, we need to throw the Cheney-Rove administration under the bus. I'm a Conservative Republican, voted straight Republican, and want to remain Republican, but the Bush Administration was a corrupt in too many ways. A spade is a spade.

Joe C. of VA 6:23PM January 27, 2009

Douglas Holtz-Eakin would be the guy who advised McCain to adopt the democrat position regarding the slow distruction of the energy sector. WTG. Of course, McCain picked him, so John was suffering rectal cranial inversion before this particular brand of confirmation bias.

Me, I don't know whether to kick Doug for boneheaded advice leading to MC losing the election, or shake his hand for saving us all from a McCain Presidency.

Looking back at the Bush Presidency he made a mistake not taking a forceful stand against Al Gore and the stable of zero growth initiative advocates littering NASA and acedemia. He did the country a disservice by not fighting those necessary domestic battles.

James Mayeau of CA 3:19PM January 27, 2009

Robert Schlesinger

Robert Schlesinger

Robert Schlesinger is managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, overseeing all opinion editorial content. He is the author of White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. E-mail him at rschlesinger@usnews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rschles.

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