Calling Richard Clarke

I'm wondering what Richard Clarke might have to say about this idea that is now bouncing around the Republic; i.e., That Bush kept us safe.

I'm not so sure.

I'm pretty sure that Bush was President on 9/11 and there were some folks at the time - Richard Clarke being the bravest one, who stood up and said that the White House was AWOL. In a big way.

But here is Peggy Noonan, a writer (and conservative) who I admire saying stuff like this:

"In the seven years since 9/11, there were no further attacks on American soil. This is an argument that's been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has. It is unknown, and perhaps can't be known, whether this was fully due to the government's efforts, or the luck of the draw, or a combination of luck and effort. And it not only can't be fully known by the public, it can hardly be fully known by the players at all levels of government. They can't know, for instance, of a potential terrorist cell that didn't come together because of their efforts."

There are some serious qualifiers in that passage, to be sure, but I'd like to advance a different meme. President Bush was in office when the worst attack on the American mainland took place. So in fact Bush did not keep us safe. He failed us. In more ways than we can count.

Like Richard Clarke said, "Your government failed you."