Breakfast with Bwana

Breakfast with Bwana

JANUARY 16, 2005

SONOROUS NONSENSE:

It seems that I was a bit premature in crediting the President with having an "accountability moment" when he said: ``I speak plainly sometimes, but you gotta be mindful of the consequences of the words. What would you call that? A confession, a regret, a something?'' (See Genes Of Regret And Hope, from January 14, below).

The President has hastened to clear up any misunderestimation we may have had of what he said. In other words, he wanted to be sure that his words did not have any misunintended misconsequences.
The President's misclarification arose in the context of an interview he gave to reporters from The Washington Post (misPost?):

The Post: In Iraq, there's been a steady stream of surprises. We weren't welcomed as liberators, as Vice President Cheney had talked about. We haven't found the weapons of mass destruction as predicted. The postwar process hasn't gone as well as some had hoped. Why hasn't anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election. And the American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me, for which I'm grateful.

Listen, in times of war, things don't go exactly as planned. Some were saying there was no way that Saddam Hussein would be toppled as quickly as we toppled him. Some were saying there would be mass refugee flows and starvation, which didn't happen. My only point is, is that, on a complicated matter such as removing a dictator from power and trying to help achieve democracy, sometimes the unexpected will happen, both good and bad.

Well, I would have settled even for the President's saying that the "bad" stuff that happened was "unexpected."

The President's Instant Spin -- retracting his apology while suggesting that the election results constitute ratification of his Iraq policy was outdone only by Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy. When the President's words were read to him and shown on the television monitor during his appearance on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, Senator Kennedy said: "That's ridiculous." He then went on to point out how Lyndon Johnson had been re-elected with a huge majority, but that was no ratification of his Vietnam policy.

When Schieffer asked Senator Kennedy: "Did you just call the President of the United States, ridiculous?" Kennedy backed off and said "The policies are ridiculous." This Instant Spin on what he had just said, may be taken by some as showing respect for the Office of the President while expressing disagreement with the positions taken by the occupant of that office.

I, for one, think that there is a time to point out the Emperor without clothes, that his nakedness, yes, even nakedness of logic, is showing.

For more fun on the subject of spin, readers might find Jim Baar's site, www.spinspeak.com and his book on Spinspeak interesting.

To change the topic, but only slightly, Tim Russert on Face The Nation, offered this from the Inaugural Address of President Warren Harding:

MR. RUSSERT: David Von Drehle, in The Washington Post, wrote a great summary of inaugural speeches way back in 1997. He referred to Warren Harding's speech, and this is amazing. I'm going to put it on the screen and try to read it.
"We have mistaken unpreparedness to embrace it to be a challenge of the reality and due concern for making all citizens fit for participation will give added strength of citizenship and magnify our achievement."

Mr. Russert then noted that H.L. Mencken said it was a "sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures."

Doris Kearns Goodwin chimed in: "In fact, he said it was so terrible, Mencken did, that it had a certain grandeur to it."

The President's protestations about the rectitude of his Iraq policy, coupled with his occasional lapses of reflection admitting he knows this not to be so (Dan Bartlett, his new counsel, offered a sort of apology, also on Meet The Press) are beginning to have a ring of sonorous nonsense. The problem is that for the families of the 1,300+ Americans and many thousands of Iraqis killed, and of the tens of thousands injured on both sides, it is so terrible that there is a certain sadness to it.

So, to the President's question: "What would you call that? A confession, a regret, a something?'' my answer is, yes, it's something. It's something else.

Cheerz....Bwana

Copyright © BwB 2005