Balkinization

How to Say Anything and Get Away With It

Dwight Meredith has been running a series of valuable posts on the Bush Administration's tendency to lie, mislead, and generally to say one thing while doing another. I first noticed this tendency during the 2000 campaign. When Vice President Gore argued that Bush's proposed tax cuts would cause severe deficits and mainly benefit very rich people, Bush simply repeated over and over that these criticisms were "fuzzy math." It seems quite clear in retrospect that it is Bush who has been the master of fuzzy math. His Administration has repeatedly fudged figures, and hidden the long term costs of his tax cuts. It has announced support for a wide variety of programs and policies-- like homeland security-- and then cut back on spending for them in its budgets. It has repeatedly asserted its belief in the values of decentralization and federalism and then told the states that they will have to go it alone in funding and financing programs, with the result that state and local governments are in their worst fiscal crisis in many many years.

How does the Bush Administration get away with this? It gets away with it by stating that the President believes in X and then, some days or weeks later, failing to fund X or doing the exact opposite of X. For example, the President will say that he supports clean air and water, and a healthy environment in a public statement, and then will cut funding for EPA enforcement or weaken environmental regulations. Or he will announce that he strongly believes in Americorps but cut it out of his budget. He will announce that the government needs to make the homeland safe and denounce those who oppose him as uninterested in protecting the homeland and then fail to appropriate sufficient money for homeland security in his budget.

This strategy puts the burden on the press, and the public, to connect the earlier statement of what the Administration says it believes in and promises to do with what it actually does later on. If the press and the public do not follow up, because the news cycle has moved on, or the public's attention has been diverted to other matters, then the Administration gets away with it. It appears to be in favor of the environment while actually harming it; it seems to be in favor of helping states take on regulatory tasks while actually refusing them any help; it appears to be devoted to making America safe while actually failing to make the necessary expenditures to guarantee our safety. Because there is no follow up, and no follow through, the Administration can have it both ways. It can say whatever it thinks is popular, or compassionate, or fair, and then do things that are unpopular, heartless, and deeply unfair.

If, by some chance, an intrepid journalist or commentator asks the Administation how it can justify its policies given its stated committments, the response is simple: The journalist is wrong. The Administration remains committed to a strong environment, a healthy economy, more jobs for more Americans, fair tax breaks for everyone, a safe and secure homeland, and so on. That is to say, the Administration simply insists that it isn't doing what it is in fact doing, and then dares journalists to prove otherwise. And even if they prove otherwise, the Administration will simply deny that proof has been offered.

The Administration, in other words, has learned that in the current media world, it is enough simply to say things over and over again, and wait for the news cycle to bury any inconsistencies. It has, so far, at least, been a fairly effective strategy, for most Americans do not really know great a disconnect there is between this President's public pronouncments and his actual policies. And if the Administration has its way, they never will.

Posted 12:44 PM by JB [link]