In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Bush's Gaffes - Forgivable?
A nice piece explaining that basically because everyone thinks he's an idiot Bush can say anything he wants, and it's okay.
On July 14, during a joint Oval Office news conference with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Bush was asked why he made the uranium assertion even though U.S. intelligence agencies had questioned its accuracy.
Bush replied that the CIA had cleared the speech, then added: "The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in [italics added]."
The last sentence in that sequence simply can't be squared with the record of what happened in Iraq.
...
To Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia scholar who has studied the presidency for years, the most notable thing about Bush's statement is that it attracted so little notice. And he says the process by which that happens offers an important clue to Bush's ability to sustain public support.
Sabato says many listeners mentally "fill in the brackets" of a presidential gaffe, imputing what they think was meant regardless of the actual words. And Sabato himself is inclined to accept Bush's statement as a simple slip of the tongue, not a calculated lie or a fundamental lack of awareness of the facts.
He acknowledges that this is giving Bush "an enormous benefit of the doubt," but says he's prepared to do so - in part because the alternative is so unthinkable. "If he actually thought that was true, we would have an enormous crisis on our hands because we would have a president disconnected from reality," he said.
Folks, we have an enormous crisis on our hands.
- rob 4:57 PM - [PermaLink] -
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