From TPM reader Rich D. …
Bush accused Kerry of waffling on the issues today:
What about Bush:
1) Job projection numbers change within a week or two.
2) The cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit dramatically rise within a few weeks of passage.
3) The timetable and procedure for a transition government in Iraq changes weekly.
4) His statements on who is responsible for the poor WMD intel change weekly.
5) He now denies that Sadddam let the UN inspectors in Iraq.Dubya stands for Waffle.
Does Kerry have a “Rapid Response” Team?
Now, I like this list. And I thank Rich D. for sending it. But I’m <$Ad$>not sure these are waffles exactly. They seem more like examples that, for this administration, all facts are fungible or perhaps infinitely malleable.
Indeed, I’m really not sure you can say the president is a waffler at all. His policy positions remain fairly consistent over time. It’s not his positions that change, but his facts.
I’d almost say that the president — or the White House, more broadly — is something like the inverse of a waffler. He continues with policies even after the factual arguments upon which he initially justified them collapse entirely.
I got into this issue — the Bush administration’s belief in the utter malleability of facts — in an article last summer in The Washington Monthly. And we’ll be returning to it presently.
