About a year ago, the AP’s Jennifer Loven wrote a terrific item about the president relying on non-existent straw men to get through most policy arguments. As Loven explained in March 2006, when the president “starts a sentence with ‘some say’ or offers up what ‘some in Washington’ believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows…. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.”
At the time, conservatives were outraged that a reporter at a major news outlet would have the audacity to report on something that … is entirely true and newsworthy. How dare a journalist engage in fact-checking when the president is trying to mislead people?
With this in mind, the right probably won’t care for today’s Loven piece, either.
Confronted with strong opposition to his Iraq policies, President Bush decides to interpret public opinion his own way. Actually, he says, people agree with him. […]
[At a White House press conference last week,] Bush said: “I recognize there are a handful there, or some, who just say, ‘Get out, you know, it’s just not worth it. Let’s just leave.’ I strongly disagree with that attitude. Most Americans do as well.”
In fact, polls show Americans do not disagree, and that leaving — not winning — is their main goal.
In one released Friday by CBS and the New York Times, 63 percent supported a troop withdrawal timetable of sometime next year. Another earlier this month from USA Today and Gallup found 59 percent backing a withdrawal deadline that the U.S. should stick to no matter what’s happening in Iraq.
The AP’s list of recent examples is rather long, with the president and his aides consistently fabricating public support that simply doesn’t exist.
Bush could say, “The public and I are on different pages, but we all want what’s best for the country. I’m the president (The Decider) and I have to stick to my policy whether Americans support it or not.” There’s a certain honor in this approach. It’s still wrong, but if he stuck to this line, at least it would be honest.
But the White House prefers a different path. When the polls show results they don’t like, they make up new ones.
Bush aides say poll questions are asked so many ways, and often so imprecisely, that it is impossible to conclude that most Americans really want to get out. Failure, Bush says, is not what the public wants — they just don’t fully understand that that is just what they will get if troops are pulled out before the Iraqi government is capable of keeping the country stable on its own. […]
Independent pollster Andrew Kohut said of the White House view: “I don’t see what they’re talking about.”
“They want to know when American troops are going to leave,” Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, said of the public. “They certainly want to win. But their hopes have been dashed.”
Kohut has found it notable that there’s such a consensus in poll findings.
“When the public hasn’t made up its mind or hasn’t thought about things, there’s a lot of variation in the polls,” he said. “But there’s a fair amount of agreement now.”
I don’t think the White House line is a result of dishonesty so much as it’s just denial. I suspect Bush, Cheney, Tony Snow, Karl Rove, and others simply can’t imagine a strong majority of the country rejecting the president’s policy this forcefully. They make obviously false assertions about public opinion probably not to deceive, but because it’s more in line with what they want to believe.
It’s kind of sad, actually.