Sure, the president can dissemble his way through an interview with 60 Minutes while only embarrassing himself a couple of times, but the truth is, as a professional deceiver and demagogue, Bush’s skills are limited. He doesn’t sound credible; at times he barely seems to believe what he’s saying.
To see a real pro at work, we need to watch the Vice President in action.
Appearing on Fox News this morning, Vice President Dick Cheney said that criticism of President Bush’s new Iraq plan, announced this week, was undercutting U.S. troops in Iraq.
He also said that any “sense of Congress” passed in the days ahead would not halt the president’s troop escalation in Iraq, adding that he had not yet heard a “coherent” Democratic plan on Iraq. Bush, after all, is “commander in chief” and “you can’t fight a war by committee.”
Now we’re talking. This is the kind of breathtaking dishonesty and demagoguery we expect from the White House.
I was particularly fond of Cheney arguing that critics of the war and terrorists want the same thing.
“[I]f we were to follow [Democrats’] guidance, the comments, for example, that a lot of them made during the last campaign about withdrawing U.S. forces, we simply go back and re-validate the strategy that Osama bin Laden has been following from day one, that if you kill enough Americans, you can force them to quit, that we don’t have the stomach for the fight. That’s not an answer.”
First, al Qaeda seems pretty anxious for us to stay in Iraq. Second, the “guidance” Cheney is smearing isn’t just coming from Democrats right now; a growing number of congressional Republicans are saying the same thing. For that matter, Cheney is smearing the majority of Americans, too, who oppose escalation, want to see a withdrawal, and would support Congress cutting off the funds for the war.
But the best part of the interview had to be when Dick “Last Throes” Cheney told us about all the progress in Iraq.
From the transcript:
Q: Over the last 46 months, the President and you have repeatedly said that you are on the path to victory, sometimes proposing exactly the opposite policy of what the President did this week. Let’s take a look.
(Video clips begin.)
THE PRESIDENT: Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight.
THE PRESIDENT: Not only can we win the war in Iraq. We are winning the war in Iraq.
THE PRESIDENT: Will we be nimble enough? Will we be able to deal with the circumstances on the ground, and the answer is yes, we will.
THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely we’re winning.
(Video clips conclude.)
Q: Mr. Vice President, why should we believe that this time you’ve got it right?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think if you look at what’s transpired in Iraq, Chris, we have, in fact, made enormous progress.
Now, Cheney isn’t even sticking to the White House script here. The message went out last week that it’s time for the Bush gang to appear to be in touch with reality. No more “happy” talk or claims that we’re “absolutely” winning. No one wants to hear such nonsense anymore. In his national address on Wednesday, the president talked openly about the lack of progress, his personal frustration with conditions on the ground, the failures that have transpired to date, etc.
And yet, there’s the VP, on Fox News, boasting about the “enormous progress” he’s seen in Iraq. Amazing.
Over the last several weeks, Cheney has kept a relatively low profile. With the new public-relations offensive underway, I can only hope the Vice President will appear on TV quite a bit more.