Rove steps in

September 5, 2005

Yesterday, as part of a new White House strategy of shifting blame for the Katrina fiasco onto state and local officials, a “senior Bush administration official” told the Washington Post that “as of Saturday, [Louisiana Gov. Kathleen] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency.” The claim, of course, was completely untrue.

And yet, the lie seems to be making the rounds. Newsweek has now reported the same bogus claim.

It’s tempting to ask why on earth these reporters would publish a lie without doing at least some research to see if it’s true, but the more important question is: who’s lying to reporters (again) at the White House?

Keep in mind, for political reporters in DC, “senior Bush administration official” doesn’t go to just anyone. It’s a phrase describing a relatively small circle of top White House personnel, which, as Tapped explained some time ago, generally includes “the vice-president, the cabinet secretaries, those with cabinet-rank, the chief of staff, maybe the deputy chief of staff, and a couple of other really senior advisors. It’s a fairly limited pool.”

This New York Times piece seems to shed quite a bit of light on the situation.

Under the command of President Bush’s two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. […]

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett.

As Josh Marshall put it, “Add it up.”

September 5, 2005 at 9:46 am

The WH sometimes opens itself up so bad that it’s shameful not to take advantage.

So they say that Blanco had not declared a state of emergency? (When in fact she did?)

All that means is that the WH is STILL (AFTER ALL THIS FUCKING TIME!!) out of the loop. In other words, how could an administration so incompetent that, after more than a week afterward, it still doesn’t know that a state of emergency was declared, be competent enough to handle anything?!?

Like I said, a response is easy as pie. All that’s left is for someone to take advantage of it.

This administration will try to politicize Katrina at every turn as they attempt to prop up Bush. Look for them to use Katrina as a creative excuse for all of their policies (tax reform, privitization, no-bid contracts) — it will be their “911” for all of their domestic pet projects just as Sept. 11 was used to promote their neocon foriegn policy.

Progressive law makers cannot let them get away with this, everyone in the reality-based community should have a chart made — on one side of the chart would show the money commited to rebuilding New Orleans; on the other side of the chart would show the money commited to rebuilding Baghdad. The contrast would be telling.

That`s it.I could really care less what these dirty criminal rat bastards try to spin anymore.There is a special place in Hell waiting for all of them.

I don’t know. There just seems to be so many gullible people out there. As far as I am concerned, just because the current White House says something, I immediately assume that it isn’t to be trusted.

Cynical, though it seems to work, since from the Iraq invasion/aggression to Social Security ‘reform’ just about anything out of this administration’s collective mouth has essentially an exaggeration or a lie.

What I think our president (or I should say his handlers) don’t seem to get is that victory at all costs is sometimes as good as a loss.

What’s important is how the MSM portray the White
House spin, and the tragedy of Katrina, to the
American people. The real facts don’t matter –
only what the MSM say about them. That’s the
primary source for the American worldview.
Only a few of us dig for the truth, and use
alternative sources.

And what I’m seeing so far is not encouraging.
The MSM are reporting the intense criticism
of Bush in the wake of Katrina, but they seem
to be doing it from Bush’s perspective, as if
his presidency were as much a victim of this
awful catastrophe as the citizens of New
Orleans themselves.

I read at least three articles this morning,
where the point of view was on what
the compound effects of Iraq, the energy
crisis and Katrina were doing to his
legislative agenda, and how difficult it
has made it for Mr. Bush. They weren’t
considering what his disastrous policies
were doing to this country, but to his
presidency, as if we’re all supposed to
treat his egregious failure as a leader
as some dread disease that he bears
no responsibility for.

This is bizarre. Think about it.

Bush is going to come out of this
because the MSM are going to make
sure he does. That’s my prediction.

I also think that we should not underestimate the long-term affects of “Foxification” of Bush supporters. Members of my family – who are very decent and intelligent people in so many ways – do not feel any outrage about Bush. In fact one of them told me that, “We must rebuild NOLA to show that we can do it. To show that we will not be cowed by this.” I couldn’t believe my ears. It was the “If we don’t rebuild, the terrorists (mother nature?) win(s)” argument. He spoke it with conviction. I listened in silent saddness because I do not know how to counter this kind of belief without completly destroying my brief vacation here and I thought, “Well, at least he wants to rebuild NOLA.” But there was no outrage about the failure of the national government’s response to this crisis. No acknowledgement of Bush’s incompetence. No disgust over his manipulative photo-op visit to the disaster area. No skepticism over the “no one could have foreseen what happened to the levees” spin. And no sense that we must rebuild NOLA because it is a part of this country’s national fabric and heritage. I think of this as “Fox-headedness,” and I see it in people whose world view comes primarily from watching Fox news.

I’ll ask the question of why these reporters spread this lie. The reason they had to source it is that they knew it wasn’t true. If it was a fact, they could have printed it as such. This is the way journalists can print false information without feeling personally responsible. It was probably part of the deal for getting “access”.

I’m sorry, but I think the pressure needs to go more on the dopes printing this crap, than on the admin for telling the lies. Verifiable facts should not be sourced to people, even if they’re true, and this claim wasn’t tough to verify.

Reporters need to be held responsible for what they print. If you leave your delicious steak in reach of the dog, it’s not the dog’s fault for eating it. It’s yours, because you knew the dog would eat it. If the Bush Admin thinks they can lie about this stuff, they will; and the only punishment comes from not lying. Especially as it’s not enough to get corrections after the fact. Unless something major becomes of this lie story, more people will have heard the initial claim than those who have heard the correction. And it all just becomes more of the background noise coming out of the Whitehouse, which allows them to hide all their evil doing.

So sure, we need to pressure the Whitehouse about these lies, but more pressure needs to go on the reporters who allowed the Whitehouse to do this, yet again.

As Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, and lots of other prominent folks who got their delicate parts caught in a wringer could tell the president, “It ain’t the crime, it’s the cover-up that’ll get ya.” And that’s just what’s happening to the GOP spin machine.

Granted, too many media outlets and their star journalists give a free pass to Bush and Company. But increasingly the lies are being caught, the liars getting confronted (e.g., Russert with Chertoff yesterday), and the blogosphere is making it ever harder for the spinners to get away with the lies (even when spread unquestioningly by WaPo).

So this is what “starve the beast” would look like, huh?

I think the reporters are correct to print the quotes coming from administration officials, because it puts them into the public record; as such, they can be scrutinized for accuracy. If they simply elected not to print them because they knew them to be false, then the public never knows that there was INTENT to mislead. By putting these quotes out there, the rest of us – very easily in this case – can see them for what they are, namely blatant attempts to mislead the American people.

I hope the media will keep it up.

Drew,

You’re missing a big piece of the puzzle: the reporters print the lies and then don’t contradict them with the truth. So the public gets the lies only. The vast majority of them won’t look elsewhere and find the truth, so the lie will gain currency. And on and on and on we go, with a sleepy ignorant public voting (or nearly voting) crooks like this into office because the MSM never held their feet to the fire by quoting their lies and then immediately—in the same article—revealing them for the liars that they are.

How can you believe this article? It is a bunch of bologna. Its just another media article with another unnamed souce. Who is this senior administration official? Give me one once of proof that a senior administration official said this other than this WP article. Give me a press release. Give me an interview. Plz, I beg you to substaniate this WP article with any fact. Give me the senior administration official’s name.

Comments are closed.