THE OBAMA-BUSH WARS - AT 7:28 A.M. ET:  Byron York, in the Washington Examiner (which we haven't quoted before) chronicles the escalating feud between the Obama and Bush administrations:

Former White House adviser Karl Rove's bare-knuckled response to recent statements by Vice President Joe Biden has brought into public view a growing resentment on the part of Bush administration veterans over what they regard as repeated and unwarranted slams from the Obama White House.

The current president and his team are being "gratuitous, slightly petty, and slightly obsessive in blaming Bush for things," one former White House adviser told me.

"Completely gratuitous," said another.

"Unfair," said a third.

The hard feelings surfaced after an April 7 interview on CNN in which Biden recounted a visit with George W. Bush. "I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office…he said, 'Well, Joe, I'm a leader.'" Biden recalled. "And I said, 'Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one's following.'"

A few days later, Rove accused Biden of lying. "It didn't happen," Rove said on Fox News. "He's making these things up out of whole cloth…It is a habit he ought to drop….You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the vice president of the United States."

COMMENT:  The constant needling of the Bush administration by the president and his team is unhelpful, and diminishes Mr. Obama.  Wouldn't it have been nice for Obama, while speaking in Europe, to give Mr. Bush some credit for our progress in Iraq and for keeping America safe after 9-11? 

Frank Luntz was on Fox last night saying much the same thing - that the Obama attacks on Bush can do Obama no good.  He alienates potential allies in the center, and even on the near right.  There is a lesson here from President Reagan who, while partisan, always maintained a gracious relationship with the opposition, especially Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip" O'Neill.

April 14, 2009