October 24, 2006
Of Course
The Wall Street Journal has taken to quoting Bush verbatim, and it's actually rather alarming.
President Bush said he sometimes uses Google’s satellite mapping program to transport him back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bush was asked a question on many of our minds: “I’m curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?” According to CNBC’s unofficial transcript, he replied: “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.” He added: “I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”
This is probably why he sticks to ye olde reliable sound byte. It's easier on the deteriorating frontal cortex. Unfortunately "stay the course", when referring to the war in Iraq , is no longer available, due to poor poll performance. In fact we are busy erasing the phrase from history. If the President used "the Google" more he'd see that it might be a bigger project than expected.
Dan Froomkin, consistantly reports like the Neiman Scholar that he is:
The most obvious example came on Sunday, when ABC News broadcast an interview in which Bush denied he had ever advocated staying the course. Here's the text of the interview, which was conducted on Wednesday. Anchor George Stephanopoulos was asking Bush about comments from James A. Baker III, who has said that the independent commission he co-chairs is pursuing alternatives to "cut and run" or "stay the course" in Iraq. Said Bush: "Well, listen, we've never been stay the course, George. We have been -- we will complete the mission, we will do our job and help achieve the goal, but we're constantly adjusting the tactics, constantly." White House counselor Dan Bartlett used almost the exact same words this morning on CBS News's " Early Show ": "It's never been a stay the course strategy." But as the liberal Think Progress blog so definitively pointed out yesterday, Bush repeatedly has described his strategy in precisely those terms. "We will stay the course." ( 8/30/06 ) "We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq." ( 8/4/05 ) "We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the president or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We're just going to stay the course." ( 12/15/03 ) "And my message today to those in Iraq is: We'll stay the course." ( 4/13/04 ) And so on. With "stay the course" polling poorly, what Bush and Bartlett apparently are trying to do is get credit for the fact that the tactics in Iraq have and will continue to change, while at the same time insisting that their overall strategy and goals remain unchanged -- and sound.
On Friday, Froomkin had this analysis:
It's often said that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. But there may be nothing that goes against President Bush's nature more than doing just that. [that's because he sobered up with the wrong organization -Dak] When it comes to Iraq, Bush's political strategy in the run-up to the mid-term elections has been to stress the possible downsides of the "cut and run" approach -- civil war, increased carnage, instability at the heart of the Middle East, Iraq as a base for terror -- while refusing to acknowledge that his "stay the course" approach, ironically, appears to be delivering all those things and more. Now, a presidency that has been all about aggression risks a major public rebuff as a sizeable majority of the Americans appears to have accepted what Bush can't: That his brassy approach has backfired -- and that it's we who are getting beaten up. Evidently, something needs to change. But what? The Bush White House (and its press corps) often confuse tactics, strategy and goals. Tactics are what you use in the service of the strategy you choose to achieve your goal. Even the best tactics, in pursuit of an ill-chosen strategy, will not achieve the desired goal. Bush's goal is a stable, secure, democratic Iraq. His strategy is for American troops to stay there until that happens. The tactics are getting those troops killed. And while the president has been talking about adjusting tactics lately, he can't accept that his strategy may need changing -- or even his goal. At least not yet.
Speaking of courses, all of us here at Dakota are very fond of cycling, and thought we would all enjoy a little exercise this morning.
Photo note: "the course" out front of the compound where the President learned to ride his bike -- those were the days before bike helmets. .Heaven knows what may have happened.
Addendum: Of course, the film