🚀 go-pugleaf

This is too good not to republish. It is so descriptive of the political
world with Bush as President!!

Thanks again to Kevin Drum.
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002180.html

A TAXONOMY OF LIES....The Bush administration tells a lot of different kinds
of lies....um, untruths. What kinds are there?
Paul Krugman likes to focus on the brazen lie, the kind favored by Dick
Cheney this weekend that finally got the press up in arms. As Krugman points
out, this is the kind of lie where Bush says (during the 2000 election) that
he's going to take a trillion dollars out of Social Security and this will
make the system stronger. It's completely outrageous, but if you say it
loudly enough and with enough confidence, people believe it. After all, no
one would make up something that crazy unless it were actually true, right?

Josh Marshall thinks Bush's specialty is "the confidently expressed, but
currently undisprovable assertion." For example, the idea that his 2003 tax
cut proposal would spur job growth was almost universally scorned by
mainstream economists, but you couldn't prove it wouldn't work, so he got
away with it.

But I think the real hallmark of the Bush administration is the technical
lie, a statement that's very carefully constructed to leave an incorrect
impression - but that turns out to be technically true if you parse it
closely enough. Here are a few examples from different policy areas to show
what I'm talking about:


  a.. Stem cells. Back in 2001 George Bush said "more than 60 genetically
diverse stem cell lines already exist....and they have the ability to
regenerate themselves indefinitely, creating ongoing opportunities for
research."

  If you look at the words very carefully, this is technically true. The
reality, however, is that at the time of of his speech there was only one
genuinely usable stem cell line - something Bush's team knew perfectly well.
(And even today there are less than a dozen usable lines.) But everybody
watching his speech came away with the clear impression that there were
plenty of promising stem cell lines available for scientists to play around
with.


  b.. The 16 words. In his State of the Union speech, Bush said, "The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

  Again, this is technically true: British intelligence did say this (and
they still do). But American intelligence didn't believe it and Bush knew
this very well. His words were very carefully chosen to leave the clear
impression that we had proof of this activity while still leaving him an out
if questioned about it.


  c.. The dividend tax cut. Hawking Bush's dividend tax cut earlier this
year, the White House said "More than 40 percent of people who receive
dividends make under $50,000 per year...."

  Again, this is technically true: 40% of people who receive dividends make
under $50,000 a year. However, this is clearly designed to make it sound
like 40% of dividend income goes to these people, which is not true. The
vast, vast majority of dividend income goes to the rich, and people who make
under $50,000 generally own no more than a few shares of stock apiece (often
in the company they work for). The average tax cut on these few shares of
stock averaged less than $30 per year for those making under $50,000.


The brazen lie and the "nondisprovable" lie are bad enough - but I guess
they don't bother me as much as they should because I feel like all
politicians do this. But the fact that you have to parse the Bush
administration's words so ultra-finely in order to get to their meaning
strikes me as something new. It's as if they listened to Bill Clinton
talking about the meaning of the word "is" and suddenly got a brainstorm
that this technique could be applied to everything.

And this is why the president's fans can pretend to be outraged when he's
called on his lying. "It's not a lie!" they scream, and they're right in a
hyper-technical sense. But in every other sense, they're dead wrong. What
else do you call a deliberate - but very carefully crafted - attempt to
deceive?

Posted by Kevin Drum at September 19, 2003 10:54 AM | TrackBack