This is only a test

Many around the blogosphere, my livingroom, and apparently around Georgetown dinner party tables as well, are speculating about why President Bush said what he said about the “Mission Accomplished” banner. Why lie so blatantly and so unnecessarily about something so minor and so easily fact-checked? Was it arrogance? Stupidity? Both?

Nope. It was a test. Bush is certainly aware that the only thing that kept Al Gore from walking away with the election in 2000 was his press-manufactured propensity for minor, unnecessary, easily fact-checked lies. Most of which weren’t lies at all, but forget about that. A Bush-friendly, lazy press made them lies, and puffed them up until they became not just lies, but an indictment of Gore’s character and sanity.

The fundamental character of the press hasn’t changed in 3 years. So if their true bias is for the easy and amusing story, the sharks should be all over this banner business, with front page stories in the New York Times and round-the-clock pundit denouncements of Bush’s mendacity. But if that doesn’t happen—and it looks so far like it won’t—Bush can be confident in a press corps that will hammer his opponent for every misstatement, while giving him his usual free pass. Because that would empirically demonstrate that their pro-Bush bias is the stronger. So, especially this far out from the election, a little white test lie is quite safe and could generate some very useful information.

Ok, ok—just kidding. Obviously it was a graceless moment of cowardice under fire. He got an unanswerable question—either he admits the sign was premature, and thus that the war has not gone according to plan, or he sticks by the sign and looks callous and out of touch—and he panicked and blamed the nearest fall guy.

If blaming the troops for your mistakes is honor and integrity, let’s have some more blow jobs from interns, please.

Filed under: politics/2004