Day: December 28, 2006

President George W. Bush and his top advisers made a “big mistake” in their justification for invading Iraq, Gerald Ford told journalist Bob Woodward in an interview embargoed until after the former president’s death.

Ford, who died on Tuesday at his home in California at age 93, said he would not have gone to war, based on what was known publicly at the time, said the report on The Washington Post Web site on Wednesday.

Already weeks in the making, President Bush’s new war plan is being burnished with the assistance of top military and diplomatic advisers as critics of the war urge the Democratic Congress to resist any call for a large military buildup in Iraq.

It’s unclear whether Bush will signal his desires or just seek further consultation when he meets at his Texas ranch on Thursday with Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the National Security Council.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will miss the funeral for former President Gerald Ford because he and five other Senators are junketing to South America to visit Inca ruins.

Reid left Washington Wednesday afternoon with three other Democrats and two Republicans on a trip that will tour the Machu Picchu Inca ruins and visit the Presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

While the New Year can be expected to bring a series of major announcements about who will or won’t run for the presidency, none is more anticipated than a decision from Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. The political world has been abuzz for weeks at the prospect of an African-American making a serious run at the Democratic nomination and the question of race seems thankfully to be far less a concern than Obama’s relative inexperience in both foreign and domestic policy.

When nature calls during a debate or vote in the House of Representatives, what’s a member of Congress to do?

The answer, even as the first female speaker of the House prepares to be sworn in next month, depends on gender.

The members-only House men’s room, with its shoeshine stand, fireplace and television tuned to floor proceedings, is nestled a few paces from the House chamber, beside the speaker’s lounge, flanked by Capitol police. How convenient.

Two senators, independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Lamar Alexander, have planned an experiment aimed at getting more senators to be civil to each other and to unite on some legislative solutions.

The rough idea hatched after the Nov. 7 elections showed that many voters were upset with gridlock and bickering in Washington.

Gerald Rudolph Ford, who steered the United States out of one of its greatest Constitutional crises, was a decent man destined to be remembered as the only president never elected on a national ticket.

His death Tuesday came just six weeks after he became the longest-lived president in U.S. history, surpassing the life span of Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004 at 93 years and 120 days. It also ends an unprecedented era in American history that saw five presidents alive at the same time.

Washington Monthly writer Kevin Drum asked recently whether (I’m paraphrasing) political moderates who are exposed to a lot of left-wing idiocy are likely to become more conservative than they would otherwise be, while those who are subjected to right-wing idiocy are likely to become more liberal.

This seems plausible to me, and especially plausible in the one case with which I’m most familiar: my own. And I’ve encountered a good deal of evidence that my experiences in this regard are far from unique.

There are two schools of thought about the tradition that highly trained professional pundits practice this week, every year, by unveiling their New Year’s predictions.

Some say these predictions are not worth the paper they are written on. But I say they are. Punditry predictions are worth the price of one slim piece of newsprint — if not in its pristine form, then certainly after the accrued accumulation after the newsprint is recycled as lining in birdcages.

Gerald R. Ford was a man of limited ambition who, through bizarre circumstances never before experienced by the country, achieved an office that others win through the greatest determination and calculation. The nation’s 38th president, Ford wanted only to become speaker of the House. History had another place for him.

Ford was comfortable in the House, representing a Michigan congressional district for 25 years, rising to Republican leader and working toward his dream of one day running the chamber, when President Nixon called.