"While I know Harriet would have made a fine justice, I didn't think enough about how the selection would be perceived by others," Mr. Bush writes. "I put my friend in an impossible situation. If I had to do it over again, I would not have thrown Harriet to the wolves of Washington."...But Roberts was originally picked for the O'Connor position. The idea of appointing a woman, then, didn't matter all that much.
--After he tapped Roberts for chief justice when William Rehnquist died, he only considered women candidates to replace O'Connor. "I didn't like the idea of the Supreme Court having only one woman."
--There were "frustrating roadblocks" for most of the women candidates. When several senators said they were impressed by Miers, he concluded "she would make an outstanding justice." Miers was "shocked" when he asked if she was interested.In addition to Miers, Bush says he considered Patricia Owen, but he thought Miers would be easier to confirm. After all the trouble with Miers, he switched to Alito, who, he writes, was "ill at ease" with Bush at first. Bush relaxed him by talking about baseball.
--No one in the White House ever suggested conservatives would revolt over her nomination. Bush suggests the opposition was elitist because Miers didn't go to an Ivy League school and "is not glib."
--Roberts was not the unanimous choice. Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales backed Judge Mike Luttig. Miers supported Alito. Chief of Staff Andy Card and adviser Karl Rove favored Roberts. (Which means J. Harvie Wilkinson and Edith Brown Clement, the other two contenders early on, didn't have prominent backers.)It seems that Roberts has a special appeal to Bush, who liked his "gentle soul" and "quick smile."
--Brett Kavanaugh, now a federal appeals court judge, told Bush Luttig, Alito and Roberts would all be solid justices. He suggested Bush ask a "tiebreaker question" of which man would be the most effective leader. To Bush, that was Roberts.
"So I'm drunk at the dinner table at Mother and Dad's house in Maine. And my brothers and sister are there, Laura's there. And I'm sitting next to a beautiful woman, friend of Mother and Dad's," says Bush. "And I said to her out loud, 'What is sex like after 50?' "Why can't adults talk about sex? This is only a story about the depredations of alcohol... but why? Why must conversation be so boring that an interesting question draws "serious daggers"?
After that, one could hear a pin drop. It was "total silence," says Bush. "And not only silence, but like serious daggers" from my mom and my wife.
He says that, with a case of "after-dinner remorses," he later called the woman to apologize. But she got the last laugh. Bush says that on his 50th birthday, when he was Texas governor, the woman sent him a letter reading: "Dear Governor, Well, what's the answer?"
In office for barely two years, Obama entered the survey in the 15th position - two spots behind Bill Clinton and three spots ahead of Ronald Reagan.Yeah, they marked him down because of his humble beginnings. He should have been higher.
Obama got high marks for intelligence, ability to communicate and imagination, but his score was dragged down by his relative lack of experience and family background.
In February of 1973, President Nixon called future president and then-Republican National Committee chairman George H.W. Bush, and recounted a recent visit to the South Carolina state legislature.
"I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature," Nixon told Bush. "I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let's look for some… Understand, I don't do it because I'm for women, but I'm doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not… So have you got that in mind?"
Bush replies, "I'll certainly keep it in mind."
"Their trickle-down economic theories have been a miserable failure, and this is an admission of that miserable failure," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle told CNN.The earliest Gephardt example was from January 21, 2003. To be accurate, I did find this earlier quote:
The absolutely miserable failure of this administration on economics is what brings us to this point.That's from November 7, 1991. It's about Bush all right. Bush I.
