The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday that President Bush should speak publicly about a leak of classified intelligence that was released to rebut an Iraq war critic.
"The president of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on Fox News Sunday.
"The president may be entirely in the clear, and it may turn out that he had the authority to make the disclosures which were made," Specter said. "It was not the right way to go about it because we ought not to have leaks in government."
Specter was referring to a brief filed last week in the case of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.
I don't think the President "owes the American people" anything in this matter. It would be politically advantageous for him to come out and respond to those who have been criticizing him on this, but the way Sen. Specter is putting it you'd think he wants the President to come out and apologize.
Which, of course, is total nonsense in that the "leak" (if you can call it that) a) wasn't illegal, b) wasn't all that unusual and c) wasn't even made public by the reporter it was give to.
The President absolutely needs to come back with a forceful response. Indeed, he almost always is in need of a forceful response to whatever trumped-up "controversy of the week" the media is pushing, yet such a thing is usually either non-existent or so delayed as to be meaningless.
The Bush administration has become listless in its response to the daily onslaught of attacks from the liberal media and the left and it has a lot of Americans feeling frustrated. I think that if the President would respond more often and more forcefully his poll numbers would turn around. Unfortunately, this is advice that has been given by people more influential than myself and still it has gone unheeded at the White House.