Bush portrait label assailed

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington last month unveiled its newest acquisition -- Robert Anderson's official portrait of President Bush, seated by a vase of white lilies, which traditionally symbolize purity. And at least one U.S. senator is unhappy about the way the painting has been installed in the museum's galleries.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has written to the gallery's director, Martin E. Sullivan, to complain about the wall text that accompanies the picture, according to the political website Talking Points Memo. The painting's label says the 43rd president's administration was marked by "the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." Sanders is demanding a correction:

"When President Bush and Vice President Cheney misled our country into the war in Iraq, they certainly cited the attacks on September 11, along with the equally specious claim that Iraq possessed vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The notion, however, that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, or that one "led to" the other, has been widely and authoritatively debunked. ... Might I suggest that a reconsideration of the explanatory text next to the portrait of President Bush is in order."

A spokesman at the National Portrait Gallery told me that a response to Sanders is being prepared and that the museum is "planning to make a change" in the text accompanying the painting. When the museum sends it, I'll let you know what it says.

UPDATE: The National Portrait Gallery has agreed to change the label.

--Christopher Knight

Photo: Laura Bush, Robert Anderson and President Bush at the Dec. 19 portrait unveiling. Credit: Associated Press

Comments

[Troy Riser]

Seems to me Bush haters would've been spent by now, but no. Thankfully, the President has borne the venom and vitriol aimed his way with a grace and dignity hardly anyone could match. To his political enemies, who know most of their attacks on his person and motives are and have been disingenuous and pettily partisan: let it go. Move on. Go take your place in that creepy personality cult forming around Barack Obama and bask in the light of his glory.

[Matt Knowles]

Here's hoping they chaneg "led to wars..." to "preceded wars..."

[Coralchristie]

Sen. Saunder should realize that there is a direct correlation between the 911 attack and the wars. That he chooses to complain is too bad but typical of the liberal element that takes tantrums if history isn't written according to their beliefs. I'm simply tired of this riff-raff in government that never ceases to complain about anything and everything unimportant and then falls in line with "the socialist party" line on the important. Saunders has another case of diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

[Dan]

The 2000 election has permanently rendered much of the left incapable of normal brain function.

[catmman]

Bernie Sanders is a "democratic" Socialist. I know, I know, he doesn't belong to an offical Socialist "party" but labeling him an indeoendent is patently misleading.

[The Last Sane Man in America]

Bernie Sanders, like most of the left, is insane, stupid or both.

First, nowhere does the caption on the portrait say Iraq and 9/11 are linked. It says simply that the attacks led to the wars. They did. We were attacked, congress passed the AUMF and we went to war, because we believed, as Secretary of State designate, Hillary Clinton, reiterated today, that the biggest threat to the United States and the world is WMD falling into the hands of terrorists.

The left, epitomized by Sanders, is simply psychopathically deranged in their obsession to insist that we went to war in Iraq for any reason other than we, and everyone else in the world, believed the evidence and Saddams own behavior overwhelmingly suggested that Iraq had WMD.

It is entirely possible and defensible to think the war was wrong, but those who go beyond that to suggest that the world didn't believe Saddam had WMD are simply deranged, psychotic, brain-addled liars.

[robert1014]

It's insulting that Bush will enjoy his post-Presidential life in the lap of luxury, rather than in a prison cell where he belongs. He's a mass murderer and torturer, nothing less.

[Randy J. Churchill]

Mr. Sanders can think whatever he wants. President Bush will laugh at him and all the others who act similarly. Today, 28.2 million people in Iraq live in freedom and without fear of tyrants as long as we have stood by them. Mr. Sanders will disappear into history as did all the appeasers of Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam and bin Laden. And President Bush will for all history be known as the liberator of the Iraqis as well as 32 million Aghanis. Hard to think about, isn't it BDS fans?

[stephen]

Perhaps they should just rearrange the sentence a bit.

"the 43rd president's administration, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was marked by the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Seems to make sense to me.