While discussing President Obama's press conference, where he said that they “didn't have a strategy yet” for fighting ISIS in Syria, which the media and those on the right have been picking apart ever since, former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer actually had the gall to lecture another president about failed "leadership."
Here's how Fleischer responded when host Brian Stelter read a line from a Washington Post op-ed criticizing President Obama for trying to “minimize the threats” in the Middle East and asked if he agreed.
FLEISCHER: I think President Obama doesn't want to be George W. Bush and he is so reluctant to get Americans involved in anything militarily in Iraq, in Syria and so he's trying to find a line where he just doesn't have to use America's military power other than for the smallest of surgical strikes and that won't work against ISIS.
It's also, so many Democrats are now bolting against the president. Elizabeth Warren has now come out and said we need to destroy ISIS. But the problem with what Bill just said is words...
STELTER: But it's so easy to say, it's so easy to say “We need to destroy ISIS.” It's so much harder to do it.
FLEISCHER: No, it's not. It's what presidents do. It's called leadership. When a president says we need to destroy them, he needs to then back it up. President Obama said we will destroy them. He set a red line for Syria and didn't act upon it.
Words matter. That's why being a spokesman, that's why being the president is so important. They rally coalitions. They rally leaders around the world. They send signals to friends and foe alike. And when the president's words are contradictory, it does have terrible impact on politics.
So says the spokesman for one of the worst presidents we've ever had, who decided to go it alone in invading a country that was not a threat to us, who was lucky to make it through a press conference without contradicting himself left and right and who did more to make America loathed around the rest of the world than any president in recent history. Yeah, that's some real leadership there Ari.
h/t Media Matters
