On a panel this morning here at Atlantic's HQ, former Bush administration communications counselor Karen Hughes praised President Barack Obama's inauguration speech, but she was uncomfortable, she said, with a few nasty jabs that Obama seemed to sneak in. Highes said that Obama's use of antithesis at points was offensive, such as when he implied that President Bush had shrunk from making the tough decisions.
She noted that Bush "went against his free market principles" to support massive government interventions in the economy, that he supported the surge of troops into Iraq when almost no one else did. Hughes that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair praised Bush's singular courage in a videotaped messge the former President watched yesterday.
Later, when Obama spoke "[t]o the people of poor nations" and pledged "to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds," Hughes recalled President Bush's insistence on sending tens of billions of dollars to fight poverty and AIDS in Africa and did not like the implication that the government was just now discovering its obligation to the poor of the world.
Hughes insisted she was speaking for herself -- "he didn't say a word," she said of the former president. Asked what Bush did say, Hughes said he said he felt "joyful" and "free."
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