RUSH: Rebecca in Orrington, Maine, you’re next on the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Well, thank you for having me. I had the great honor of meeting with President Bush in the summer of 2007 as a military mom. I urged him at that time to have Congress really stand up about what the Democrats were doing, saying the war was lost and putting a lot of pressure on people not to fund the troops. In retrospect, what he did was the right thing. He didn’t bring the fray down to their level with people just saying the most outrageous things, and let the military families, just as a matter of fact, speak up.
RUSH: Yeah, I’ve asked him this question I can’t tell you how many times personally, privately, and his answer has never wavered, and it’s tough for me. I try to put myself in his shoes, try to imagine myself president of the United States, and in my mind, I’m doing everything I’m doing for the benefit of this country. If it’s a terror attack that I’m responding to with military policy, it’s to keep the country safe. If I’m coming up with an economic policy, Social Security reform, it is to benefit the people of this country. And to have that maligned, be personally maligned, I could not — if I were inclined not to sully the office and not respond to it personally, I would not silence my administration. I would turn ’em loose. It’s too serious. It matters too much. I would make sure the people that voted for me understood that they had a leader, but he was hell-bent on not sullying the office of the presidency. He told me that I can’t tell you how many times, and to this day it’s tough for me to understand, even now. We’ve got an economy unlike any since the Great Depression. He’s being blamed for it. The Democrat Party and the media are blaming him and he’s content to let long-term history be the judge of this. Now, I know that his faith in God is what gives him the comfort and the confidence to do this, but I would not be able to stand mute about it like he is.
CALLER: It was hard for me to understand at the time, but in retrospect it was probably the right thing.
RUSH: Why do you think that? I mean, you’re a military mom, you said, but why do you think that?
CALLER: I think the media was putting us in such a tight squeeze at the time and trying to drag things into the gutter as much as they could, that staying out of the gutter and really just letting things play out and letting us speak out, you know, the families that were having to deal with this, was the better thing to do.
RUSH: Yeah, but see, everything has a consequence. His reticence to treat them politically might have led to the Democrat Congress in 2007. It might be the reason we’ve got Obama.
CALLER: And that’s Congress’ fault, in a way. Yes, they should have done more, and the media really, you know, we had to find a better way to stand up to them. I put a large part of this at their back door.
RUSH: Well, I have become an expert in dealing with the media. That’s not a problem. I try to put myself in his shoes. And I’ve had people tell me when I share this story, ‘Well, you don’t defend yourself when you’re attacked.’ Yeah, but I’m not president of the United States. I’m not running the country. I don’t have the power invested in me by virtue of an election. You know, I don’t respond to critics. I’m too famous. I’m just too big. If I respond to critics all I’d do is make them bigger, all I’d do is elevate ’em. But in the world he lives in, I mean Congress is Congress. You can’t say that they’re the equivalent of MSNBC to Fox News or something. It’s a death match in a way. Some people say I’m hypocritical because, ‘You know, Rush, you don’t defend yourself, you ignore these critics yourself.’ And that’s very true. But I don’t think it’s an apples to apples analogy in comparing me or anybody else in the media being attacked by, you know, little ankle biters and Chihuahuas to the kind of things presidents get. We’re talking about the country, the country’s economy, the well-being of the American people, the whole position of the United States of America in the world as opposed to the status of a talk show or a talk show host.
Anyway, as I say, I’ve asked him I can’t tell you how many times and the answer is always the same, and I’ve asked Rove. You people know, I mean you’ve asked me why all of those personal assaults. I mean, you remember the stuff, not just ‘This war is lost,’ but, ‘Bush is Hitler’ and all this garbage. I mean it was personally slimeball vitriol. There were books on how to assassinate George W. Bush. And the left told us, ‘Well, it’s an art form. We must understand the intellectual artistic expression in these endeavors.’ No, we don’t. If some right-winger was talking about this Democrat president this way they’d be putting him in jail. And the answer is always the same. The office of the presidency is way up here, and those people are down in the gutter, and I’m not taking the office of the presidency down there. So it is what it is. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it, Rebecca.