Caveat lector

WEAPONS OF MISDIRECTION (PART 4)! Exaggeration is Bush’s excuse! We gaze on The Press Corps’ New Standards:

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2003

THE PRESS CORPS’ NEW STANDARDS: Did the Bush Admin mislead the public in the run-up to Iraq? Almost surely, the discussion will labor along, with a handful of pundits asking real questions and others trying to misdirect you. Ackerman and Judis lay out the real questions real critics have actually asked. But then, the shills are out there too. They’re struggling hard to direct you away from reviewing those actual questions.

But, as they try to misdirect your gaze, defenders of Bush are presenting a theme which puts the modern press to a comical test. The president didn’t lie, these Bush-shills proclaim. They say that Bush only exaggerated.

We saw David Rosenbaum make this claim in last Sunday’s New York Times. Bush didn’t “actually lie,” the scribe said—although “a strong argument can be made that he exaggerated.” But Rosenbaum hardly seemed upset about that. Indeed, all presidents do that, he said. In fact, U.S. presidents have to. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/23/03.)

Bush didn’t lie—he only exaggerated. In fact, Rosenbaum wasn’t the first Bush shill to present this pleasing construction. In his June 8 Washington Post op-ed, Robert Kagan sang the song too. “There is something surreal about the charges flying that President Bush lied when he claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Kagan thundered. But he acknowledged a possible lesser offense. “[T]he Bush administration may have—repeat, may have—exaggerated,” he went on to say. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan recited the script in his eponymous weblog this Tuesday. Bush didn’t lie—he exaggerated:

SULLIVAN: The good news for the president is that the left is still obsessing about his “lies” and his stupidity. The question of lying, however, is obviously an important one. Did, on current evidence, the president deliberately mislead the public on the imminence of the threat of WMDs under Saddam? I’ve read a lot of critiques now—and it seems obvious that a few parts of the administration’s multi-faceted and drawn-out case for deposing Saddam were, to put it kindly, hyped. But the evidence unearthed by The New Republic’s estimable John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman ultimately amounts to an argument that the administration exaggerated the intelligence estimates on Iraq’s nuclear capacity and its ties to al Qaeda.

Bush didn’t lie—he only exaggerated. This laughable construction lets us watch the press corps reveal its true character. After all, we all remember the principled corps which brought us Campaign 2000! From March 11, 1999 right on through November 2000, that press corps was troubled by a great, mighty theme: Al Gore has a tendency to exaggerate! They flogged this theme for twenty straight months, never failing to worry hard over Gore’s very troubling inclination. Indeed, exaggeration bothered the press corps so much, they even engaged in pre-emptive behavior; they simply invented a string of exaggerations and pretended that Al Gore had said them! Meanwhile, dime-store psychiatrists like Newsweek’s Bill Turque explained what the troubling tales “really meant.” For twenty straight months, your press corps pretended to be deeply disturbed by this problem.

How much did they hate exaggeration? On October 6, 2000, Richard Berke of the New York Times wrote what was roughly the three millionth article about Gore’s very-troubling tendency. Early on, he quoted Dick Cheney, who was “puzzled and saddened” by Gore’s misstatements. And Berke went academic-shopping, coming up with a quote that he liked:

BERKE: Robert Schmuhl, a professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame, said Mr. Gore should take greater care to watch what he says.

“It’s reaching a point where a stereotype might form and we might think of Gore as someone who is prone to exaggeration,” Mr. Schmuhl said. “That’s a real danger for someone who is trying to run for president without the strain of character questions or problems of credibility.”

But now, we have a sitting president who has seemed to mislead us in many ways. These apparent misstatements haven’t been conjured by the press—and they don’t involve such ludicrous “questions” as how Erich Segal wrote Love Story. As Sullivan notes—and he defends Bush—“it seems obvious that a few parts of the administration’s…case for deposing Saddam were, to put it kindly, hyped.” And that’s how it seems when you “put it kindly.” Given the serious subject involved, others will be more severe.

As we’ve said, the corps made it clear, several years ago, that they simply hate exaggeration. But now, they’ll likely make something else clear; you’re going to see them make it clear that they’re owned by the RNC. Your major pundits will run and hide, struggling not to observe what has happened. Bush-shills will say that he only exaggerated. And Big Pundits will cower and hide.

We’ll close this day with a note to Tim Russert, hailed by the press for his tough-talking ways. Tim! As Ackerman and Judis make fairly clearly, major Bush figures went on Meet the Press, and while there, more or less lied in your face. So let us close with this uplifting question: When do you plan to confront them?

PONTIUS SULLIVAN: Washing his hands like Pontius Pilate, shifting shapes like the Grand Inquisitor, Andrew Sullivan wriggles away from examining what The Admin may have done. Let’s run through his statement again:

SULLIVAN: The question of lying…is obviously an important one. Did, on current evidence, the president deliberately mislead the public on the imminence of the threat of WMDs under Saddam? I’ve read a lot of critiques now—and it seems obvious that a few parts of the administration’s multi-faceted and drawn-out case for deposing Saddam were, to put it kindly, hyped. But the evidence unearthed by The New Republic’s estimable John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman ultimately amounts to an argument that the administration exaggerated the intelligence estimates on Iraq’s nuclear capacity and its ties to al Qaeda.

STALE FIELDS: In this morning’s Washington Times, Suzanne Fields offers a well-worn complaint. Elite, snobby liberals think cons are just stupid! You’ve heard it recited a thousand times. Snore! Here’s Fields’ recitation:

FIELDS: A fascinating discussion rages at Tech Central Station, a Web site “where free markets meet technology.” Readers are responding to a column with the title, “Why Liberals Think Conservatives Are Stoopid,” by Keith Burgess-Jackson, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, who argues that liberals who depict conservatives as dull-witted, of low intelligence and perversely wrong, merely prefer the ad hominem attack to a rational discussion of issues they are afraid they’ll lose. He notices that Dwight Eisenhower, Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, winners all, are invariably described as dunces.

“If you are a liberal arguing with a conservative,” as one letter-writer to Tech Central Station says, “your first thought is that he’s an idiot.” These liberals condescend rather than engage, express contempt rather than contentiousness, and glide glibly over surfaces when they should be probing the depths of an argument.