Deciphering Tom Ridge
It has been a pretty strange couple of days trying to figure out exactly what Tom Ridge believes happened during his tenure as head of the Department of Homeland Security. In his book he states pretty clearly that he felt that there were political motivations behind some of the arguments to raise the security levels right before the 2004 Presidential election. However, in the many television interviews that he has given over the last few days he seems to be backing off of those statements. He is now asserting that he was just commenting on his thoughts at the time and not ascribing actual motivations to any of the people that he mentions. At least that is my best guess at what he is trying to say. His every attempt to explain himself is only more confusing and more convoluted. The most troubling contradiction is that in his book he clearly wrote about his belief that the process had become politicized and had “reinforced his decision” to leave Washington. This surely is a clear judgment against the Bush administration’s practice of placing politics above policy. However, he even tries to explain this away now by saying it was just “time for him to go” part of the “natural cycle” of politics.
He keeps on thanking everybody for giving him a chance to “shine some light” on the issue but it is only getting more murky. It has been very troubling for those of us who had some measure of respect for the man as a seemingly fair minded conservative with a conscience. He even gave up on a perfect chance to distance himself from the Bush administration’s lies about WMDs on Rachel Maddow the other night. Instead, he turned his answer into a perfect example of pretzel logic that only prompted Rachel to issue him a very stern lecture on credibility. I think that even she was surprised at how much emotion she showed when he attempted to spin the un-spinable. George Bush, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are never going to have any power in this country ever again. Yet he is defending them even at the expense of his own reputation. They just do not deserve that level of loyalty.
From every angle, when you look at the difference between the things he wrote and the things that he has been saying, it brings about only two possible conclusions. Either he is a really bad writer or he is a really bad liar.
