With the third anniversary of the war in Iraq coming up, the Bush White House has decided to launch a new political offensive with a series of presidential speeches on the conflict. Raise your hand if this sounds kind of familiar.
Staff members, many of whom have been with Mr. Bush since he first began running for president in 1999, responded on Friday in a familiar way: To mark the three-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, they announced that Mr. Bush would give a new round of speeches, starting Monday at George Washington University.
As ever, there will be no change in policy. Mr. Bush will talk, they said, about new progress in defeating “improvised explosive devices” and argue that the televised pictures of rising casualties and sectarian fighting obscure progress under way.
But to answer criticism from both parties that Iraq cannot be fixed with another good-news speech, Mr. Bush will also try to confront the realities of the war.
It’s like deja vu all over again. In December, the Bush gang launched an offensive on Iraq, stringing together a series of presidential speeches, which offered no change in policy, and which Bush reluctantly acknowledged some of the difficulties the U.S. has had, all the while insisting we stay the course. The difference between the December campaign and this new public-relations offensive is, well, there is no apparent difference.
It’s worth noting that the promotional campaign in December was not exactly a success. Gallup found opposition to the war and Bush’s handling of it unchanged after the president articulated his thoughts over the course of four public speeches.
So why do the same thing over again? The New York Daily News reported today that “one White House official conceded it was the only card the administration could think to play these days.”
Jonathan Chait reported yesterday that the Bush gang is “stuck in the no-idea zone.” Another series of cheerleading speeches will only help prove the point.