"I'll take 'History' for all the marbles, Alex"

by RonK, Seattle

George W. Bush is in Jeopardy!, and he's staked his fortunes to a tortured reading of recent history, namely:
1. You had the same intelligence I did.
2. Two official reports cleared me of wrongdoing.
3. Everybody said Saddam was a threat.
4. And all you suckers fell for it!

A credibility showdown in History? It's not exactly George's strong suit. Given the public record (and investigations pending), you'd expect Team Bush to drop this line faster than Kay Bailey Hutchinson's "what's a little perjury among friends?" trial balloon.

But they mean to play this for keeps. Fine-tune the talking points, rehearse the surrogates, and release the hounds. Redouble the stakes by attacking fact-checking journalists.

There's a purposeful strategy behind this apparent lunacy. It's big, and it's bold ... and it's massively destructive.

The White House isn't in this game to score debating points. They're out to spin up a self-sustaining myth -- one that reduces History to a swearing contest, reduces skeptics to partisans, and extinguishes debate the moment it enters the room. It's a mythconstructed to outlive Bush's administration ... and his generation ... and go on  sowing distrust and division in the body politic for generations to come.

This myth never has to win majority share. Feeding on ignorance, alienation and wishful thinking, it only has to sustain critical mass. Like the Vietnam myth ("We would have won except for Walter Cronkite") or the Cold War myth ("Eisenhower was a Communist dupe"), it never has to win a serious argument.

The myth just has to show up loudly, insistently and reliably enough to make argument fruitless -- at the company picnic, or in the he-said-she-said "balance" of modern journalism. "OK, let's talk about something else."

This will be his legacy: Bush the victim of defeatist partisan critics. An iron-clad guarantee against consensus on where we've been, and a divisive starting point for every argument about where we're going.  This polarizing fault line keeps a susceptible core of partisans at safe distance from the arena of measured public discourse, where Karl Rove's successors can play them to the advantage of George Bush's successors.

And play them they will.

Comments

[RonK, Seattle]

Plutonium Page points out the Science isn't exactly George's strong suit either. Hmmm. What IS his strong suit?

[emptywheel]

How odd is it that BushCO has resorted to posting rebuttals on their website. I mean, Whitehouse.gov has basically become a blog of thin refutations.

Is this an admission that Levin and the WaPo command more press attention right now than Bush, that he can't get their attention (or deliver a disciplined enough message) to rebut his critics in the press?

Is it a testament to Rove's dying influence on the press, that they're stuck with Blogish refutations on the web?

Or is it a sign that whatever B Team is running the White House right now can't successfully fight back?

In any case, it's pretty pathetic.

[daria g]

They do this over and over, don't they? I've begun to take notice of some of the excessively absurd talking points that show up on the other side - they're not meant for me or for anyone remotely near the reality-based community. They're just out there for the purpose of giving his base something, anything to shore up the myth that W is faultless and never to blame for anything that goes wrong, ever.

I wonder how hard this myth is to sustain. Some of them could probably use an intervention.. or a cult deprogrammer..

Thing is, they're so used to this playing-the-victim thing, perhaps they are unaware how weak & pathetic it looks when everybody knows they are in control of every branch of government?

[daria g]

emptywheel, I must've been composing my post at the same time as you - interesting that "pathetic" seems to be the key word here..

[Mimikatz]

They are undercut somewhat by the resolutions in the Senate this morning, as the GOP has coopted the Dems' position minus the timetable for withdrawal. That still allows the GOP to paint the Dems as "cut and run" cowards, but in asking Bush to set forth an exit strategy, the GOP is making clear that he doesn't have one right now.

[emptypockets]

As Steven Colbert deadpanned to a completely befuddled Bob Kerrey last night, why don't the Democrats just admit "that they had access to exactly the same intelligence that the administration let them have?"

If we want to sum it up with an alliterative two-word gerund phrase (and who wouldn't), one that has been dropped lately is "playing politics." (It comes easier to those pols who are averse to just saying "they lied.") They have played politics with social security, they have played politics with the Supreme Court, they have played politics with the lives of our troops, they have played politics with the American public, they have played politics with stem cell research, they have played politics with prescription drugs, they have played politics with Katrina relief, and now (again) they are playing politics with women's health:

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation's largest provider of abortion services, issued a statement saying, "The G.A.O. report confirms the F.D.A. has been playing politics with women's health all along." (In response to a report that the FDA decided to block over-the-counter sales of Plan B morning-after contraceptives without a review of the scientific studies.)

[aquart]

Piffle. They can talk and talk and talk. The answer is: I saw American citizens begging for water and medical aid on the streets of an American city. Bush left them to die. He would have left ME to die and he would have left YOU to die. That's what defeated Bush.

What are they going to respond? "Well, I know he wouldn't have left ME to die"???

[al-Fubar]

As RonK pretty much implied, this is just one more chapter in an ongoing serial, in which each exciting episode ends with America sold out once again by those wicked Liberals. And about a third of the public will buy it as a matter of faith.

As my wife says about art, everything old is new again.

-- Rick

[Meteor Blades]

A "tortured reading of recent history," eh?

I've been calling George Bush "Dubyanocchio" for more than two years, and catching flak for it at the ever-fewer rightwing web blogs I visit. My version of framing. As shown by the polls that DemFromCT places before us several times a week, more and more Americans believe that Bush is a liar. What's hurting him now is not, however, his lying, but the fact he's such a bad liar.

Unfortunately, short of some miracle, those lies aren't going to get him tossed out of the White House.

[RonK, Seattle]

aquart -- Piffle. That's an argument they don't have to win. They don't even have to respond. Events will overtake.

All they have to do is maintain a cadre of intransigent supporters

Some of the people will buy their pitch. A lot of the people will WANT to buy it. In time, as memory fades, a majority may buy it. Or not.

These people are patient and methodical. It's not about Bush. It's about conservative posterity -- a desperate bid to stop Bush's fall, but a reliable safehold for the next guy in the chain.

[rasmus]

Bush the victim of defeatist partisan critics

But who will be the poster child for the myth, a la Walter Cronkite (or perhaps Jane Fonda or John Kerry) and the war in Vietnam?

Hmm, I guess it doesn't matter. The important thing is that anyone can be plugged into script for "defeatist partisan critic." ...

[LizDexic]

A few months ago, Elisabeth Bumiller, top apologist for Bushco at the NYTimes had a fluff piece on "the songs on Bush's iPod", which included "My Sherona." (!?)
This immediately made us want to make a playlist of the songs that *should* be on his iPod. The first one that came to mind was Sam Cook's "Don't know much about history..."
Also, "You're no good" (by Linda Ronstadt), "War" (what is it good for? absolutely NOTHING...quoted just today by a Cheney heckler) and
"Liar liar" (..."pants on fire; your nose is longer than a telephone wire").

We need more. Suggestions accepted.

[Steve]

Perhaps John Kerry will be blamed for costing us TWO wars. That would most likely be a record.

[texas dem]

"Fortunate Son"