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Does landing brouhaha give Bush a boost?
By Bill Schneider
(CNN) -- We've never seen a Play of the Week come back for an encore. But the previous play had legs, as they say in Hollywood. So play it again, guys. Here's what I said about President Bush's dramatic jet landing last week on the deck of an aircraft carrier: "This president intends to run for re-election as the commander in chief. He opened the 2004 campaign from the USS Abraham Lincoln." This week, some Democrats complained bitterly. "I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, said in a sharply worded speech delivered on the Senate floor Tuesday. Well, Bush is commander in chief. And the war in Iraq was very much his war. "Not only was I able to thank our troops," Bush said in a news conference Wednesday. "I was able to speak to the country and talk about, not only their courage, but the courage of a lot of other men and women who wear our country's uniform. I'm glad I did it." What got the Democrats' dander up was the revelation that the ship was a lot closer to port than originally announced. The president could have taken a helicopter instead of landing like "Top Gun.'' "The president wanted to arrive on it in a manner than would allow him to see an arrival on a carrier the same way pilots got to see an arrival on a carrier," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday. Yeah. "It was also a really good landing," Bush added Wednesday. "I didn't mind it." At the risk of appearing petty and grudging, some Democrats appeared, well, petty and grudging. "We asked the General Accounting Office to tell us how much all this cost, and I hope the president's campaign will pay the taxpayers back the cost," said U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, on Wednesday's "Inside Politics With Judy Woodruff." Democrats accused Bush of politics! Oh, the horror. "If the president is not going to use this in his commercials next year for his run for the presidency, it would be very interesting ...," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey on NBC's "Today" show Thursday. The more critics complained, the more the pictures ran. And ran. And ran. "Let me just say, as a Republican politician, I am delighted they keep raising this issue because it helps the president," said U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-New York. Yes, it does. It created an unexpected bonus for the White House: the Political Replay of the Week. There's a famous story from 1984 campaign when CBS News juxtaposed images from President Reagan's "Morning in America'' TV spots with the sometimes harsh reality of his policies. The White House called CBS afterward to thank the network for the piece. It didn't matter what the CBS correspondent was saying, the White House said. The only thing that mattered was the pictures.
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