Once again, it seems as if the Bush White House’s penchant for saying something repeatedly then suddenly shifting position and trying to suggest it was never said or not really meant has hit the media — and, as usual, the result will be more erosion in its credibility.
Watch THIS VIDEO of Jon Stewart dealing with Bush’s “We’re not winning, we’re not losing” comment. Whether you’re a Jon Stewart fan or not, put aside your love or hatred of his style of ironic humor…and you’ll notice this:
- Someone needs to clue this White House in on the existence (since the 50s) of videotape. And with computer technology it’s easy to do searches of snippets of speeches. It is a devastating montage.
- Bush doesn’t handle his spin well at all.
- Tony Snow finally is being faced with a nearly impossible job and doing a spin that will result in this clip being played in documentaries for years to come.
This is NOT a matter of party or ideology. It’s a matter of public officials making assertions you can trust. The chronology of these clips is devastating.
UPDATE: John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post, says the press conference was “a disaster.” Read this one IN FULL. Here’s just a small taste:
It really would have been better had he not come forward to face the press at all – because he did nothing except underline and echo a powerful sense of uncertainty throughout his own government about how to achieve victory……
……If you combine the effect of yesterday’s press conference with his remarkably depressing interview with The Washington Post the day before – when he said that victory was “achievable” in Iraq, a defeatist word that must have had Winston Churchill rolling in his grave – you can’t help but feel that Bush has had the stuffing knocked out of him by the twin blows of the November election results and the bloody chaos in Baghdad….
….Bush is in an extraordinarily tight spot – but his failure to take the lead and win the day in Iraq will not be his failure alone. It will be a blow to America from which we will require a decade or more to recover.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.