Last week, I noted that White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer claimed to have caught columnist Charles Krauthammer in a gaffe about the bust of Winston Churchill that sat in the Oval Office prior to Barack Obama becoming president. Pfeiffer said Krauthammer was wrong to say it had been returned to the British Embassy and that it was instead merely lodged in a different though less prestigious spot in the White House. Though I pointed out that Krauthammer was right on the symbolism of the removal of the bust from the Oval Office as it signified the president’s downgrading of the alliance with Britain, I wrongly assumed that Pfeiffer was right about the bust’s current location.
In fact, as Krauthammer pointed out in a blog post yesterday, the British Embassy confirms the president gave the bust back in January 2009. What’s more, the photo released by the White House claiming to be of President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron looking at the bust is one of them viewing a different bust of Churchill, not the one that had been in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who believed the White House’s easily discovered deception. Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times did too, but has since apologized and criticized the administration for its “weaselly follow-up” that “failed to acknowledge” what they had said was “false.”
The point of this kerfuffle was not so much where the bust was but the way Obama had chosen to symbolically “move on” from George W. Bush’s admiration for Churchill and how it reflected his disdain for traditional allies like Britain and Israel. Contary to Rosenthal’s apology, that is a legitimate issue, and the administration’s fallacious response shows they understand this is a problem.
Pfeiffer owes Krauthammer a real apology, but so do I. I apologize for not only relaying the White House misinformation as truth but for trusting their word over the sage Krauthammer. I won’t make that mistake again.
I can't speak to Pfeiffer. I think it more likely that he was as uninformed as most people seemed to've been about there being two Churchill busts and, believing there was only the one, which he's seen with his own eyes outside the Treaty Room in the residence, said the story about it being sent back was a falsehood. But maybe he did know the truth, and intentionally lie. n nI'm less sold on the rest. The Bush administration received the bust that they had, as a loan for the length of his first term, and then that was extended through the length of his second. Doesn't that make the Bush administration responsible for returning it (along with other items they had been loaned for the length of his time in office–and I'm given to understand there were other items) at the conclusion of his Presidency? I'm not saying Bush was in the office rolling things up in old newspaper–anymore than you folks are saying Obama licked the stamps on the package that sent Churchill #2 back–but wouldn't it be his outgoing transition team making sure all the items loaned to them during Bush's administration were returned? n nBut ok, let's say the incoming Obama transition team or the permanent White House staff agreed to take care of that for the Bush folks, and that Obama was in office and therefore "responsible" for refusing the Brit's offer to extend the loan thru his term(s) in office, and actually sending the item back. So what? n nWhy does it show disdain for Churchill, England, Israel, or any other person or country for him not to continue the loan whose time was up? Apparently, he already had a bust of Churchill–which makes one wonder where the one we received as a gift was all during the Bush administration. Did Bush have both on display, or did the Obama administration go to the trouble of getting the original Churchill bust out of storage and displaying it, showing their admiration for the man and his country? And for that matter, where was the Churchill bust during the rest of the presidencies since we received it, and does it also show disdain if they did not have it in the Oval? n nAnd further still, why do some conservatives find it preferable for this Democratic President to have the bust of an Englishman in the Oval Office, rather than a bust of one of the great U.S. Presidents–and a Republican, no less–from whom the man says he draws inspiration? n nThe whole nontrovercy seems awful silly to me… …but just the same, maybe we need a congressional inquiry to get to the bottom of the whole mess. I'm most interested in finding out where that Churchill bust gifted to the White House during the Johnson administration has been all this time, and why Dubya had to get a loaner… The truth is out there…
Rosenthal is not really being honest. He makes it sound like the return of the bust was just "redecorating" and that "the right was wrong" to see any symbolism. It is not easy to prove issues of symbolism, but even if the bust was returned because a loan was over, the way it was returned was symbolic and at the very least highly inappropriate. Plus, there was no apology given to Krauthamer by Rosenthal.