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I Was Wrong, but So Were You - Parsing Bush's new mantra. By Fred Kaplan, Slate
Over the last several days, I've been listening to the newest assortment of diversionery, Rovian "talking points" make the rounds on Hardball, The Situation Room, and all the other cable "news" show clones. I've listened to host after host ask the identical pre-scripted-by-the-White-House questions to his or her hand-picked-by-the-White House-"experts" who give their predictable pre-scripted-by-the-White-House-answers. Oh, yeah, and some poor sacrificial Democrat, not privy to the script, tries in vain to disrupt the pre-ordained flow and make a point or two. (Since he's not part of the script, he is treated as nothing more than an ill-informed nuisance.)
Then, last night, while watching all of this, something happened. The dark clouds suddenly parted, the sun shone, the skies turned blue, the brooks bubbled, the heavens audibly sighed and the angels sang in 3 part harmonies. I had, as they used to call it in the ad biz, an "Aha!" moment.
All these years the Democrats have been racking their collective brains attempting to figure out how Carl Rove managed to be so successful at EVERYTHING -- from running election campaigns to convincing Americans that "Liberal" is a dirty word to selling illegal wars. They've analyzed and debated. They've searched in vain for a Democratic strategist who could foil his tactics. All to no avail. In the meantime, liberal journalists attempt to refute, point by point, the administration's false claims and accusations. SEE: Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials - New York Times Overly consumed in the minutia of trying to prove points, they may fail to convince.
But guess what? I've figured it out--how Carl Rove was so successful. It boils down to Two Simple Rovian Marketing Gimmics: "Lying & Denying" and "Turning Lies on the Other Guys".
"LIE & DENY" works like this: 1) Start with the truth. 2) Deny it. 3) Market the denial (a lie). (By repeating it over and over again ad nauseum.)
"TURNING LIES ON THE OTHER GUYS" works this way: 1) Accuse the other guy of doing what he rightfully accused you of doing.
Got it?
The "Torture" fiasco perfectly illustrates the "Lie & Deny" technique. The truth is that the US does torture enemy detainees. Heck the pictures are all over cyberspace. So Bush denies it (a lie) emphatically: "We do not torture." Then he gets his wacky, lacky news guys to repeat the denial (a lie) over and over and over again.
"Turning Lies on the Other Guys" is currently being used to refute the criticism that the President betrayed our troops by waging an unnecessary war based on manipulated intelligence and lies. The truth, now obvious to over 60% of Americans, according to recent polls, is that Bush betrayed the troops by rushing to war rather than waging war as a last resort, by skewing intelligence to sell the war, by making untruthful claims that Hussein had ties to Al Qaida, by being ill prepared to win the war or the peace, by failing to listen to experts, and on and on. So what does Bush do? He denies it and accuses his critics of doing it. HE didn't betray the troops. His CRITICS are betraying the troops by daring to question his pre-war actions and the legitimacy of the war.
Up until now, Rove has been able to successfully use these techniques to put his enemies on the defensive and make them look foolish, weak and whiney next to his strong, decisive, "War" President-built-on-lies. He's managed to convince voters that cutting our most basic services (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, you name it) -- those designed to help the most vulnerable among us -- is "Compassionate"-- at the same time he convinced them that Democrats, who tried to protect those very programs, lacked "values". He also utilized the same techniques to whittle away at our civil rights, privacy rights, and all kinds of other rights in the guise of protecting freedom and democracy, and fighting (or was it fearing, I forget) terrorism. It has been a pretty impressive, if dispicable, run, you have to admit.
I use the past tense, because--good news--it's over, or nearly over. The lies upon which this whole scheme was based are now finally being exposed as lies, thereby beginning to crumble the whole Rovian kingdom--right down to its diabolical foundation. Rove's entire scheme was dependent on one thing: The President's credibility--which is, according to the latest polls, no more.
I know what you're thinking. Since they will no longer work for Bush & Company, why don't WE make use of some Rovian tactics of our own? As long as we are convincingly honest, we can lie about anything to gain power! The Republicans sure filled their coffers using these techniques. Think of all the money WE can raise! Forget about truth, justice, and all that silly stuff. Think "success". Think "greed". Think "win by any means". When we turn lies into truth and vice versa, truth is what WE say it is. WE decide what's right. WE decide what's moral. We can literally TAKE OVER the --
On second thought .... maybe we just ought to leave Rove and Company to drown in their self-made river of lies, while the rest of us start swimming as fast as we possibly can, with everything we've ever believed in -- truth, justice and the American Way -- up stream.
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