Too Nice?

Many of us wonder why President Bush doesn't unlimber the heavy artillery he has. Is he waiting until the election is closer? UNSCAM should certainly be a campaign issue, given Kerry's intention to turn our security over the the United Nations. Considering that Kerry thinks that we should follow the French example, shouldn't the bribes paid by Saddam to French politicians be brought up?

Maybe, as Neil Cavuto suggests, George Bush is just a genuinely nice guy, in stark contrast to the man he replaced, or the man he beat to win the White House.

President Bush was hosting Bill and Hillary Clinton at the White House for the official unveiling of their portraits. The president heaped it on, and I mean really heaped it on. He said the years had proven how good Bill Clinton was for this country, how much he had done for this country, how both Bill and Hillary were great parents to a teenager growing up in the White House, all but saying he could have used some of those same parenting skills for his own rebellious daughters. And he wasn't done. He went on to commend Hillary as the "only U.S. senator whose portrait hangs in the White House." He complimented her style, her commitment and her devotion. He joked with Bill about bravely campaigning for George McGovern in, of all places, Texas. He got a laugh. He never got much else.

Not once did he bring up items like Whitewater, or Monica, or Vince Foster, or that inconvenient issue of Osama and what this prior president could have done or should have done. No, there was none of that. And to be sure, this decorous scene was not the occasion for that. I thought I'd leave well enough alone with this whole issue until Bill Clinton himself got up to speak.

He wasn't nearly so kind, and he wasn't nearly so generous. While he acknowledged the president's graciousness, he didn't pass along one compliment, not one kind tit-for-tat. I wasn't looking for him to praise George Bush . . . after all, they are political opposites. But, please! Couldn't you throw the guy a bone, Bill? Maybe acknowledge he responded well to terror after Sept. 11, or that he's kept us safe in this country since that day? Maybe mention something goofy, like commending the president for the nicknames he gives those pesky White House reporters? Anything?

No. Nada. Zippo. Zilch-a-rino. Perhaps the contempt for this president from this former president is so acute, so intense, that he can't find the words -- apparently any words -- to say anything nice.