Mark Shields Quotes
Let's give the president some due here. They had a mess, and he fixed it, and they mobilized a lot of authority, and they did it.
Shields, Mark. PBS NewsHour. PBS.
He was referring to the President of Egypt in the midst of the Egyptian soft revolution of 2011. Wisner had been asked by the President to tell the corrupt and dictatorial President of Egypt to step down quickly. A few days later, Wisner gave a speech calling for the 30 year Egyptian dictator to finish out his term so he could “steer the changes”. He claimed that he was not speaking for the administration in this speech but it was a personal view. However, the speech created much world confusion as to what the US administration policy actually was. The quotation illustrates one of the problems of conducting diplomacy in a free democracy. A president asks a citizen to represent him; he does, and then turns around and undercuts the very position he was supposed to take. In many counties such an disloyal act would be considered treason but in America there is nothing the administration could do about it, other than to say that the Munich speech was contrary to US policy.
The Senator was blaming President Clinton for not stopping the attack on the U. S. Cole as he knew that there were hostile Islamic extremists who were known to have threatened to attack American assets wherever they were. His view was that given that President Clinton should have acted overtly and/or covertly to prevent the attack. This failure for him was an impeachable offence. He argued that George W. Bush was assuming the Presidency and this laxness and incompetence that lead to the death of 17 American sailors would end. And then came 9-11 with the same level of general information and some even more specific information and 3000 Americans were killed. However, unlike Lott, almost no one blamed President Bush’s lack of leadership for the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Lott seemed to forget his standard of presidential performance and did not criticize or urge the impeachment of the President of his own party.
Mark Stephen Shields is an American political columnist and commentator. He has worked in leadership positions for many Democratic candidates' election campaigns.
