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By Rich Lewis, Sentinel Columnist, November 13, 2008
Last updated: Thursday, November 13, 2008 9:46 AM EST
It may be many years before the American public makes a final judgment on George W. Bush’s presidency.
But chances are that he will be seen as one of the worst presidents in history — for many reasons, including the one so well evidenced by Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan in their 2004 book, “All the President’s Spin.”
Bush, they claimed, “opened a new chapter in the history of American politics” by “developing a communication strategy of unprecedented scope and sophistication centered on tactics borrowed from the world of public relations.” They note that spin and propaganda have been employed extensively by all presidents since FDR, and that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were masters of the art in limited areas — Reagan for foreign policy and Clinton for fending off scandal.
But Bush “added something far more destructive to the mix: a willingness to engage in day-to-day dishonesty on nearly every major issue he has addressed.” They conclude that Bush “has made dishonest PR tactics his standard method for marketing policies to the press and public, and thereby engaged in a “fundamental betrayal of the public trust.”
I mention this both because we are now discussing the book in a college class that I teach in which we study how advertising and public relations tactics are used by corporations, politicians and others to warp our perceptions of “reality” — and because Bush this week pretty much confirmed the book’s central argument. On Tuesday, Bush gave his first interview since the presidential election, speaking with CNN’s Heidi Collins aboard the USS Intrepid in New York, where he had attended a Veterans Day ceremony.
Toward the end of the six-minute interview, Collins made this open-ended observation:
“I imagine you probably have a moment in your presidency that you are most proud of, and a moment I’m sure you most regret....”
To which Bush replied:
“I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said.... Like ‘dead or alive,’ or ‘bring ‘em on’.... I was trying to convey a message. I could have conveyed it more artfully. Being on this ship reminds me of when I went to the USS Abraham Lincoln and they had a sign that said ‘Mission Accomplished.’ I regret that sign was there. It was a sign aimed at the sailors on the ship, but... to some it said, well, Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over, when I didn’t think that.... So, there are things I’ve regretted.”
That’s an astonishingly revealing statement.
All three of Bush’s “regrets” are examples of a failure in public relations. He is exclusively regretful that he sometimes did not manage his message “artfully” enough. And he was still spinning the Lincoln debacle.
He has no regrets that he didn’t evaluate the evidence more carefully about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. That he didn’t respond more quickly and effectively after Katrina. That he sanctioned torture, eavesdropped on millions of Americans and suspended habeas corpus. That he politicized the Justice Department, attempted to put a minor White House lawyer on the Supreme Court, rewrote scientific evidence to suit his agenda and blurred the line between church and state. That he alienated important allies and strengthened our enemies around the world. That he failed to anticipate, or take steps to avoid, the economic crisis that has devoured savings, jobs and threatens the global economy. No regrets at all about any of these things.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll released Monday showed that 83 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, an all-time high. And 76 percent disapprove of how Bush is handling his job. That is also an all-time high in polling that goes back to World Ware II — easily worse than Richard Nixon’s rating on the eve of his resignation and surpassing Harry Truman’s 67 percent disapproval rating, the previous worst.
It is hard to imagine those appalling numbers are the result of failing to “spin” the message correctly on three occasions — and yet that is what pains the president the most. If he could change anything at all, he would erase six words and take down a banner.
As you look back over the past eight years, are these the three things you most wish the president had done differently? Your “regrets” about his performance?
Fritz, Keefer and Nyhan wrote that we “must insist on more from our leaders” because promoting a political agenda “should be different from selling sneakers or soft drinks.”
But they were pessimistic that things would ever change, because Bush had permanently “changed the rules of the game.”
They could be wrong.
When Barack Obama and John McCain talked about “change,” as both did, it wasn’t just a reference to policies and programs, but to these very rules. I believe both were promising to restore the essential principle that presidents ought to speak truthfully to the American public about their intentions and mistakes — and that success and failure, pride and regret, should be about things more meaningful than photo ops and artfully crafted phrases.
If so, it is the one promise the nation most needs the new president to keep.
Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is: rlcolumn@comcast.net
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