{"id":7549,"date":"2006-05-30T15:36:25","date_gmt":"2006-05-30T19:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7549"},"modified":"2006-05-30T15:36:25","modified_gmt":"2006-05-30T19:36:25","slug":"bush-had-to-lie-to-protect-the-market-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-had-to-lie-to-protect-the-market-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush had to lie to protect the market — or not"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the grand scheme of things, examples of Bush’s mendacity are so common and disturbing, lying about replacing<\/a> his [tag]Treasury[\/tag] [tag]Secretary[\/tag] probably doesn’t rank very high. It is, however, an interesting example of the [tag]White House[\/tag] spinning a fairly obvious falsehood.<\/p>\n

As Think Progress noted<\/a>, [tag]Bush[\/tag] was asked on May 25 if Treasury Secretary [tag]John Snow[\/tag] intends to leave his job. The president was unequivocal<\/a>: “No, he has not talked to me about [tag]resignation[\/tag]. I think he\u2019s doing a fine job.”<\/p>\n

That, we now know, was completely untrue. [tag]White House[\/tag] Press Secretary [tag]Tony Snow[\/tag] acknowledged today that John Snow and Bush talked on May 20, Snow stepped aside, and [tag]Henry Paulson[\/tag] agreed on May 21 to take the job. What the president said a few days later was obviously false. It’s a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

But, what wait, Tony Snow says, it’s a justifiable<\/i> lie because the [tag]president[\/tag] has to respect the volatility of the financial [tag]markets[\/tag].<\/p>\n

“[W]hat you didn’t want to have, I think, is at a period of time when you haven’t finished doing your clearances for the person you want to fill that position, you don’t want to have chaos in the markets…. With all due respect, I think there was some concern again about how something like that affects the markets.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a word for this kind of rationalization, but it’s probably not appropriate for a family blog like this one.<\/p>\n

Look, Snow has been this close<\/i> to being fired every day for a year and a half<\/a>. In November 2004, one senior administration official said Snow can stay as long as he wants, “provided it is not very long<\/a>.” Ever since, an administration official would intermittently leak word that Snow really, truly, is on his way out. In April, Dana Milbank wrote<\/a>, “In political Washington, Treasury Secretary John Snow is a dead man walking.”<\/p>\n

Every time the administration shoved Snow a little further out the door, there was never any concern about delicate financial markets. The truth, though they were loath to admit it, was that the Bush gang was “having trouble<\/a>” finding someone [tag]qualified[\/tag] who wanted the job.<\/p>\n

I know it’s embarrassing for the White House and Tony Snow, but the president was simply not telling the truth last week. If they want to spin it away, they’ll have to come up with a better rationalization than this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the grand scheme of things, examples of Bush’s mendacity are so common and disturbing, lying about replacing his [tag]Treasury[\/tag] [tag]Secretary[\/tag] probably doesn’t rank very high. It is, however, an interesting example of the [tag]White House[\/tag] spinning a fairly obvious falsehood. As Think Progress noted, [tag]Bush[\/tag] was asked on May 25 if Treasury Secretary [tag]John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}