CANANDAIGUA, N.Y., March 14 — President Bush tried on Tuesday to tamp down complaints by retirees and pharmacists about the start of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, acknowledging that problems plagued its early days.
In an echo of speeches conceding errors in the responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq reconstruction, and in which he insisted that the problems were being resolved, Mr. Bush told a group of pharmacists and Medicare participants here that he had expected that the program would have a rocky start.
“Any time Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting,” the president said. (emphasis mine.)
Let’s just breeze by the semantic atrocity in that “Any time …, sometimes …” construction, and get to the heart of this bafflegab.
Who is it that has been in charge in Washington for more than 5 years? Who heads the party that has exerted unprecedented domination of Congress during that time? Who, while running for reelection, pointed to the Medicare drug program as one of his big achievements? And who, if he anticipated the program would have a rocky start (as he should have, given the many warnings), had the responsibility to do something about that in advance?
A faceless, collective, clumsy “Washington” didn’t pass this law, and oversee its implementation. HE did. It was his minions who ensured its passage and that’s his signature on the bill, and those were people working for him who poo-pooed the warnings and claimed they had everything ready and in place.
Mr. Bush’s right to blame problems on “Washington” ended when he left Austin.
The transition period hasn’t just been “interesting,” it’s been disastrous. And he was both in charge, and all too happy to take credit for it during the campaign, before the ‘digestive by-product impacted the air-mover.’
What will we hear from the President next? “Any time Washington invades a country, sometimes the transition period can be interesting?”