Bush memoir offers passing criticism of Reid

WASHINGTON -- Former President George W. Bush apparently didn't think too long, or too highly, about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid when he was writing the book on his presidency.

The Nevadan, who as a Democratic leader was a big Bush critic on most issues, is mentioned just a handful of times in Bush's 481-page memoir, "Decision Points." Reid mostly appears to be one of a cast of players as Bush pondered bank bailouts, the Patriot Act and going to war with Iraq.

Where Bush does focus on Reid -- on the Iraq war surge and immigration reform -- the image he draws is unflattering.

Jon Summers, communications director for Reid, said Tuesday that the former president was rewriting history in an attempt to "dress up" a presidency that most Americans view as "largely responsible for the challenges our country faces today."

In a chapter on the Iraqi war surge, Bush tore into Reid for saying during an April 19, 2007, press conference that the "war is lost."

"The majority leader had just used his platform to tell 145,000 American troops and their families that they were fighting for a lost cause," Bush wrote. "It was one of the most irresponsible acts I witnessed in my eight years in Washington."

A day after the press conference, Reid took to the Senate floor to defend his position, saying that he believed, as the U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus had stated, that military force alone could not win the war -- diplomacy and economic assistance had to be the focus.

Reid, through Summers, fired his own salvo , saying Bush's "continuing refusal to acknowledge the tremendous cost -- in service members' lives, national resources, and global leadership -- of leading this nation into war on false justifications and refusing for the war's first four-and-a-half years to reassess a failed strategy is irresponsible and selfish."

On immigration reform, Bush blamed Reid for failing to seize the moment when bipartisan reform was most likely to pass.

Bush, at the behest of Sen. Ted Kennedy, had asked Reid in late June 2007 to delay a Fourth of July recess by a few days.

Kennedy, D-Mass., needed the time to hammer out a final agreement on an immigration reform bill aimed at securing the border, providing a temporary worker program, and setting up a tough but fair path to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants who had been in America for a number of years.

"I made the pitch, but it was too late. Harry had made his decision. He called a cloture vote, which failed, and then adjourned the Senate," Bush wrote. "Senators went home and listened to angry constituents stirred up by the loud voices on radio and TV. By the time they came back to Washington, immigration reform was dead."

The Senate fell 14 votes shy of the 60 needed to advance the immigration reform legislation that the president backed. At the time, Bush said he was disappointed that Congress failed to adopt the bill but did not lay the blame at anyone's feet. Reid said at the time that the bill failed because only 12 of 49 Republicans would support it.

Summers said it is disingenuous for Bush to blame Reid when he knows that the majority leader devoted more floor time to addressing immigration reform than any previous leader.

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau reporter Peter Urban at purban@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.