I should have known
· 08/31/2004 11:12 PM by Steve Gigl
Perhaps you remember that I recently implied that I was politically stupid? Well, I should have said “stupid about the media” as well. You’d think I haven’t been a blogger for 2+ years, as dumb as I was not to check the bleedin’ transcript when it seemed like Bush said something that contradicted his own policy (and the press tagged it as such).
Powerline has the details (they got some of them from Michelle Malkin), but the gist of it is that Bush was answering a question about whether we can win the war on terror in the next 4 years. You’d think that would be an important detail, wouldn’t you?
Transcript:
Lauer: “You said to me a second ago, one of the things you’ll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war on terror in the next four years?”
President Bush: “I have never said we can win it in four years.”
Lauer: “So I’m just saying can we win it? Do you see that?”
President Bush: “I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world –- let’s put it that way. I have a two pronged strategy. On the one hand is to find them before they hurt us, and that’s necessary. I’m telling you it’s necessary. The country must never yield, must never show weakness [and] must continue to lead. To find al-Qaida affiliates who are hiding around the world and … harm us and bring ‘em to justice –- we’re doing a good job of it. I mean we are dismantling the al-Qaida as we knew it. The long-term strategy is to spread freedom and liberty, and that’s really kind of an interesting debate. You know there’s some who say well, ‘You know certain people can’t self govern and accept, you know, a former democracy.’ I just strongly disagree with that. I believe that democracy can take hold in parts of the world that are now non-democratic and I think it’s necessary in order to defeat the ideologies of hate. History has shown that it can work, that spreading liberty does work. After all, Japan is our close ally and my dad fought against the Japanese. Prime Minister Koizumi, is one of the closest collaborators I have in working to make the world a more peaceful place.”
You know, it’s funny. I see a lot of myself in the way President Bush speaks. I’d like to call that a compliment, but anyone who’s met me knows I won’t win any awards for verbal skills. (Oddly, though, if you put me at a podium—giving a presentation—or on the radio—as I was in high school—I do just fine.) I find myself editing what I’m saying in mid sentence fairly often, much the same way he does. I also, and this is fairly key, respond to questions in the same context in which they were asked.
And I think that’s what W did on the show; he had that version of the question in mind, and his answer was “No, we can’t win [it in 4 years],” not “No, we can’t win it.” That’s the only way all of this makes sense, because the statement they cut out of that answer to use as a quote doesn’t read like a normal “Bushism,” and there certainly doesn’t seem to be any way that flip-flopping on that issue—the main one of his campaign—could do him any good whatsoever.
Category: Politics
Scope: National
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