Pants on Fire
Another lacuna from the Brownstein article. He writes:
That dynamic was especially pronounced in 2000 and 2004, when the country was divided almost exactly in half between Bush and his Democratic opponents, Al Gore and John Kerry. The brutal tone and tenor of each of those campaigns—the Swift Boat accusations on one side, or the charges that Bush had knowingly lied to push America into war with Iraq on the other—left many (possibly most) Gore and Kerry supporters utterly disdainful of Bush, and vice versa.
I’ve long wondered why, exactly, the charge that Bush knowingly misled people in order to garner public support for the Iraq War is considered such an incendiary charge. Is it because politicians have a reputation as generally honest people who would never fib? Well, that can’t be right. Is it because Bush is considered an unusually honest politician who, unlike the rest of the breed, is a straight-talker? Well, no, that’s not right either. If anything, the main problem with the “Bush lied, thousands died” critique is the reverse; not that it’s unusually outrageous (the way the Swift Vets were) but that it’s extremely banal. Politicians say and do misleading things all the time and the fact that some particular policy initiative was sold, in part, through dishonest methods hardly invalidates it.
40 Responses to “Pants on Fire”
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August 19th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I love how, once again, the Republicans’ utter mendacity and the Democrats’ statement of verified fact are treated as completely equal.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
This is in stark contrast to the UK, where the beginning of Blair’s undoing was in the revelation that the pre-war evidence was gamed. The British people never have, and never will forgive him for that.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Brownstein is saying that Bush didn’t lie so the charge was scandalous. Just as saying “No War for Oil” was a horrific thing to say. Both are demonstrably true, yet that matters not. Perhaps we all have to become destitute, with crumbling infrastructure and literal servitude to the Chinese before Americans will wake up. The press is most complicit in all of this of course.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Meanwhile,
Serious Dana Milbank derided (in a racist way IMHO) Conyers for having the temerity to discuss the Downing Street revelations. How did we get here. When Jack Cafferty & Joe Klein become beacons of truth and hope you gotta know something is seriously amiss.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
It’s the suggestion that there’s something less than admirable about lying. Makes the wingnuts uneasy.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Other than in the world of Beltway punditry, where everything bad is the result of people not being bipartisan enough, isn’t this totally ass-backwards? Didn’t the Swift Boaters make (gullible) voters disdainful of Kerry? And didn’t the fact that Bush lied to get us into a war make voters disdainful of Bush? It wasn’t the “brutal tone and tenor” of the accusations; it was the accusations themselves! And weren’t Kerry voters right to be disdainful of Bush? Secondly, Matt, WTF? “I don’t get why people would have a problem with Bush lying us into a bloody quagmire.” Really? And you’re also building a strawman here. Who is saying that the fact that the case was built on lies was the only thing wrong with going in into Iraq?
August 19th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Aren’t you overlooking the obvious? The basic reason this is considered out of bounds by the MSM is that it would mean Bush lied in a way that actually cost lives and imperiled national security. The “politicians lie” stereotype is generally about either partisan politics (e.g. pandering, distorting records) or issues where the media doesn’t take a side (e.g. most domestic policy). When it comes to national security, though, we’re all ostensibly “on the same side.”
August 19th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
The other day on MPR there was an interview with Ron Suskind about his new book where he says that Bush lied to get us into war, and right off the bat Steve Inskeep flipped out (”Are you saying that the Bush administration KNOWINGLY LIED to get us into Iraq!?!”) Mind you, this is in 2008, after years and years demonstrating precisely that; Suskind just added an extra wrinkle about a meeting with Iraq’s intelligence chief that was misrepresented.
Basically the media’s too polite, and the thought that he lied is so outrageous that, if it were true, Bush would be a villian of the highest order and would belong in prison. Respectable media knows that US presidents are, by definition, not villians, so they choose to pretend that the lying didn’t actually happen. I get that feeling a lot with the media and this administration; it wouldn’t be proper for them to just come out and say that this administration has been a total disaster, full of incompetents and criminals. Their mores require them to treat everyone in politics as basically reasonable, give both sides to each story, etc. and anyone who points out that the emporer has no clothes is way out of line. So we get supply side economics being treated as if it was a serious economic philosophy, torture being called other stuff, war criminals being given a respectful hearing instead of being laughed off stage, and all the rest. We also get election coverage like “McCain says drilling offshore will lower gas prices now and Obama wants America to lose wars” without any mention that stuff like that is total bullshit.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
The claim about the lies and fabrications WAS incindiary in 2004 … at least for Bush’s supporters. They equated this sort of criticism with treason and political viciousness, and claimed that it undermined the nation’s resolve in the War on Terror.
For some of Bush’s supporters, this outrage and chest-beating was simply tactical — they sought to make questions about the Iraq war so radioactive that neither the media nor the Democratic candidates could approach them without ducking or bowing or temporizing. And it worked. The Democrats were intimidated, and the GOP’s base was riled up.
However, others in the GOP fervently believed that the Bush administration’s conduct leading to the Iraq war genuinely could not be discussed. And by and large, they still feel that way – in spite of all the new facts that have come out.
John McCain is playing the same game when he accuses Obama of treason, weakness, and betraying the troops whenever Obama tries to discuss Iraq, as McCain did just yesterday in his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Politicians say and do misleading things all the time and the fact that some particular policy initiative was sold, in part, through dishonest methods hardly invalidates it.
I know everyone gets annoyed with Dsquared sometimes, but he was right when he said, in one of the all-time great blog posts, “Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.” Are you trying to put a lot of weight on the difference between “lots of lies” and “in part, dishonest methods”?
August 19th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Matt, you’re correct that politicians frequently say “misleading things” about “policy initiatives,” and that many people are blase about this. But when the “policy initiative” is a WAR, one would think there is a heightened obligation to be honest, or at least refrain from outright lying.
The purpose of Bush’s prewar communications with the American people was to persuade them to support the invasion he desired. He knew that if he were truthful (i.e., “Iraq is no threat to the U.S. but I want to invade it anyway for other reasons…”), public opposition would be prohibitively overwhelming. So he lied. And it worked on enough people (including Matt Yglesias) to make the invasion politically viable.
The lies were, quite literally, the reason the invasion occurred. They are the reason for the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, the million refugess, the thousands of grieving American families, etc. So yeah, Matt, it kind of matters that he lied.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:11 am
A few people here seem to be misreading Matt. He isn’t saying that it’s no big deal Bush lied us into war. He’s saying he doesn’t it get it why accusing Bush of this makes people go crazy, like how the MSM treats such criticisms of Bush as totally out of bounds.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:19 am
we all have to become destitute, with crumbling infrastructure
I just got back from visiting northern Germany, Warnemunde and Rostock, and the two cities make America look shoddy. Think about that. 20 years removed from debilitating Communism, and they make us look shoddy and poor. I don’t know how the cities were treated under the Reds — one’s a seaside resort and the other’s a university town — and I know that their West German brethren have poured money into rehabbing the East, but that we come off worse than a couple of provincial German cities under any circumstances is a dreary thought.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Because they have no answer to it, so they have to pretend that the question itself is outrageous.
It’s called “changing the subject.” What the hell else do you expect them to do?
.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:29 am
We are not talking here about shading the truth or spinning perceptions, or even telling falsehoods from time to time. We are talking about an ongoing program of faking facts, suppressing sources of truthful information, paying and rewarding liars and punishing those who tell the truth, and orchestrating the presentation of an endless barrage of known lies through multiple coordinated outlets whose appearance of independence is itself a lie. This not “politicians always lie” stuff. This administration has a ministry of propaganda, which generates and disseminates the Big Lies that are the hallmark of totalitarian regimes. “Bush lied, people died” is not banal. It expresses a fundamental truth about this administration that distinguishes it from all others.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Is there any reason in the above quote for Brownstein to bring up 2000 when he only references things that happened in the 2004 campaign? 2000 was awhile ago, but I don’t remember Gore supporters saying Bush lied us into war. I do remember the press perpetuating a number of lies about Gore, while giving Bush a pass for many misstatements. To the Howlermobile!
August 20th, 2008 at 9:55 am
“I’ve long wondered why, exactly, the charge that Bush knowingly misled people in order to garner public support for the Iraq War is considered such an incendiary charge.”
It is the magnitude of the offense. This is not like an obscure rule change at the EPA that can be corrected with a lawsuit.
This is a lie that transferred hundreds of billions from the public treasury into the hands of defense contractors and oil companies, killed hundreds of thousands of people, weakened our defenses to the point of breaking, and did great damage to the reputation of this country. It can’t be undone.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:04 am
We often forget that prior to his poll meltdown Bush was considered to be a straight-talking-truth-teller with an appointment from God. Claiming that Bush had ever told a lie was considered heresy back then.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:33 am
This is a lie that transferred hundreds of billions from the public treasury into the hands of defense contractors and oil companies, killed hundreds of thousands of people, weakened our defenses to the point of breaking, and did great damage to the reputation of this country.
Yeah, but it won two elections, and saved the nation from the terrible twin specters of gay marriage and slightly higher marginal income tax rates, so what’s your problem?
August 20th, 2008 at 10:43 am
It wasn’t the charges that led to this disdain; it was the action that led to these charges that caused disdain. ‘Reporters’ like Brownstein still haven’t worked out that actions are actually more important than words.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Um, maybe it’s because lying to start a war has historically been the kind of thing which people generally have agreed that leaders should be arrested, tried and sometimes executed for doing? And in fact that has been done in the past?
August 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Good catch, Matt. That paragraph was a “drop the magazine on the floor in disbelief” moment for me when I was thumbing through The Atlantic last week. Hopefully someone writes a letter to the editor and takes Brownstein to task.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
“I’ve long wondered why, exactly, the charge that Bush knowingly misled people in order to garner public support for the Iraq War is considered such an incendiary charge.”
Are you for real, Yglesias?
Politicians emebellish, exaggerate, etc etc on matters of public policy but they rarely perpetrate an outright hoax about simple matters of observable fact.
Its one thing to be disingenuous about some policy dispute like economic policy where the variables are extremely tangled and there is no absolute standard of right and wrong.
Its another thing entirely to perpetrate a hoax like the one Bushco perpetrated about WMD.
Its one thing when you exaggerate the influence you had in getting some policy passed. Its another thing entirely when you tell outright lies on grave matters of war and peace that end up getting a million people killed.
Are you for real, Matt? Don’t you recognize the gravity of what Bush has done? Do you really see that as business as usual?
August 20th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
There’s a psychological component to some conservative Americans’ thinking that often goes undiscussed (except in books such as Lakoff’s and Westen’s about psychology and politics), which is that these folks may feel strong and confident only because they identify completely with something larger than themselves, something always strong, pure, and good. That helps them feel shored up, feel more confident as a member of a group, institution, race, nation, religion. (Obviously, then, people who are members of other groups, institutions, races, and nations are “other” and so lesser.) Criticizing that larger institution or nation, then, even on policy grounds (i.e., our current funding of public schools creates huge imbalances that predominantly affect urban minority groups) gets interpreted as a personal attack to these conservatives. So if we actually have to accept that the U.S. president lied about circumstances that laid the groundwork for going to war in Iraq, then for these particular conservatives that strips away the unquestioned goodness and strength that they identify with, that they rely upon to feel personally adequate and confident. This is the game that the Republicans play so well, that Democrats fail at, over and over, because liberals present policy prescriptions that are inherently critical of the conservative status quo, thus “attacking” conservatives where it feels most personally painful.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Here’s the deal Matt: most dishonest political statements on policy are made under the cover of plausible deniability. They can always point to some think tank somewhere that backs up their point of view. The issue is usually not one of a simple matter of fact but one where, allegedly, “reasonable people can disagree”.
But when you lie about simple matters of black-and-white fact, that’s another kettle of fish. You’re not just “reasonably” but honestly wrong, you then become an out and out liar. That’s the difference Matt. How could you have possibly missed it?
August 20th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
What Howie said. The whole gloss on the 2000 race was that Gore was an elitist smarty-pants and slickster, and Bush, while not the brightest bulb in the whole marquee, was sincere and down-to-earth, the antithesis of Gore and Clinton. The Jimmy Carter never-lie-to-you promise was unstated, but implied. So yes, Bush was viewed as an uncommonly honest politician.
Looking back at the Brownstein quote, I’d like to point out that Gore v. Bush was NOT notably “brutal in tone and tenor,” until it went into overtime in Florida.
I’m disturbed that you treat the declaration of war, of all-out regime-changing war, as just another policy call.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
“I’ve long wondered why, exactly, the charge that Bush knowingly misled people in order to garner public support for the Iraq War is considered such an incendiary charge.”
That charge is considered so incendiary by the establishment media (which is your un-stated actor in that sentence) because it’s *true*.
Much of politics is predicated on making arguments, for which there is evidence on both sides, so that either side can make a decent argument and marshal some facts in support of it — and in the end, everyone can go home happy, because they had *some* basis for believing what they did.
Arguments which hold a monopoly on the truth tend to make for ugly, awkward moments (e.g., Bush supporters falling back from “Saddam did 9/11!” to “Saddam had WMD!” to “We’re spreading democracy!” to “Support the troops!” to “They have to stay, so we don’t lose!” and so on), because one side is clearly wrong — and if the other side were to capitalize on that advantage, it’d upset the precious equilibrium which the establishment media seeks to maintain.
But the media would rather have those moments of ugly, awkward confrontation continue for *years* than examine the truth or logic behind the arguments it amplifies and legitimizes.
Republicans understand this and have adjusted their behavior accordingly; hence, McCain lies about anything he wants, and his staffers attack the media and the Obama campaign for questioning the integrity of a POW war hero.
Democrats do not seem to understand this, or at least have not adjusted their behavior to reflect any understanding of this.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
OK, Matt. I give up. Just WTF were you trying to say? Even after going back & re-reading this post twice, I get the sense you are being a Bush apologist. Perhaps it would be good to spend a little more time editing your posts before publication.
Then again, what do I know? I’ve never tried to make a living as a writer.
August 21st, 2008 at 6:50 am
Re: Basically the media’s too polite, and the thought that he lied is so outrageous that, if it were true, Bush would be a villian of the highest order and would belong in prison.
Except when done under oath in a courtroom lying is not a criminal offense. This is true even when the consequences are truly calamitous.
Re: Yeah, but it won two elections
Huh? It may have won the election of 2004 but what other election did it win? Not 2000– neither 9-11 nor the Iraq War had occured yet, and foreign policy was barely on the radar that year.
Re: Um, maybe it’s because lying to start a war has historically been the kind of thing which people generally have agreed that leaders should be arrested, tried and sometimes executed for doing?
Cite one example where this has occured. I don’t think you can. Historically, leaders whose lies lead to disasters were punished by being booted out of office and placed in history Hall of Shame– and that all that should happen. Criminalizing politics leads to far worse results than occasional policy disasters like Iraq. See the history of the late Roman Republic.
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