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Pious Perverts See other Pious Perverts Articles Title: Bush & Clinton accept medal, hailing our unity, differences Ask George H. W. Bush, an 82-year-old Republican ex-president receiving a joint award with Democrat Bill Clinton, what he thinks of the heated political season, and you might expect an appeal for less partisan rancor. Wrong. In accepting the Liberty Medal with Clinton last night for their role in tsunami and Katrina relief efforts, Bush instead offered a spirited "defense of the proper role of partisanship in our politics." "No doubt, this has been a rough political year," Bush said, "but you'll have a hard time convincing me that politics is tougher and uglier in 2006 than it was in the 1960s or than the 1860s, for that matter. "The thing is, every generation thinks their politics are rougher than at any other time in our history," Bush added, "just as every chief executive feels that their media coverage was the most offensive." In 1861, Bush said, "president-elect Lincoln had to travel incognito to Washington for his first inauguration for fear of his safety, so polarized was our nation." Bush and Clinton spoke to an audience of about 2,500 at a ceremony under the sky outside the National Constitution Center, which has taken charge of the Liberty Medal. The award includes a $100,000 prize, which the two ex-presidents have pledged to donate to their ongoing relief efforts. Clinton, who spoke after Bush, recalled that two earlier Liberty Medal recipients, doctors James Watson and Francis Crick, had discovered the structure of DNA, leading to the discovery that "human beings all across the world, Democrat and Republican, African and European, are all 99.9 percent the same, genetically." Clinton posed the question of why people were able to come together after the tsunami and Katrina. "Because when people are broken, and they've lost everything, then all the things we spend most of our time in life on, our differences, that one-tenth of one percent," Clinton said, "all of a sudden they just evaporate." Both Clinton and Bush hailed the framework of the Constitution as key to allowing Americans to differ sharply without losing the importance of what they have in common. Bush got some laughs when he recalled the hard shots he and Clinton traded in their battle for the presidency. "There may have been one or two lapses of personal etiquette on the 1992 campaign trail," Bush said. "For example, I really did not think our dog Millie knew more about foreign policy than the governor of Arkansas, but, hey, we were in the heat of the battle then. The elbows get sharp, you know." But Bush said he and Clinton have become close, and that Clinton is now referred to in the Bush family as "42," an affectionate reference to his presidency that conforms to the "41" and "43" the two Bushes sometimes use for each other. Clinton spoke of his affection for the elder Bush, saying he was someone "I always liked and I always admired. I can now tell you, and may all the Democrats forgive me this close to the election, I love George Bush, I do." The ceremony ended when Jon Bon Jovi performed the song "Who Says You Can't Go Home" and the two presidents embraced on stage.
Poster Comment: The dope from Hope, Ak sucking up to a Kennedy assasination conspirator. We need to 86 43, and deep 6 41 and 42. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#3. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
Big Barf Alert.
There are no replies to Comment # 3. End Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
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