This inspires me with. . . um. . . no confidence whatsoever.

[xiphias]

As much as I'm disgusted with the Bush administration, I'm more disgusted with our press. Politicians lie, cheat, and steal -- not all of them, but it happens -- and it's the press's job to be skeptical, to ask tough questions, and to kind of point out, "Hey, this is totally divorced from reality," when something is totally divorced from reality.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, June 3 — On a Tuesday afternoon two months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat down to a small lunch in President Bush's private dining room behind the Oval Office and delivered grim news to her boss: Their coalition against Iran was at risk of falling apart.

A meeting she had attended in Berlin days earlier with European foreign ministers had been a disaster, she reported, according to participants in the discussion. Iran was neatly exploiting divisions among the Europeans and Russia, and speeding ahead with its enrichment of uranium. The president grimaced, one aide recalled, interpreting the look as one of exasperation "that said, 'O.K., team, what's the answer?' "

That body language touched off a closely held two-month effort to reach a drastically different strategy, one articulated two weeks later in a single sentence that Ms. Rice wrote in a private memorandum. It broached the idea that the United States end its nearly three-decade policy against direct talks with Iran.

Mr. Bush's aides rarely describe policy debates in the Oval Office in much detail. But in recounting his decisions in this case, they appeared eager to portray him as determined to rebuild a fractured coalition still bearing scars from Iraq and find a way out of a negotiating dynamic that, as one aide said recently, "the Iranians were winning."

The appropriate question for a reporter to ask at this point would have been, "So, if the President had sneezed, would we now be invading North Korea? What if he had hiccuped? Would that have meant an attempt to press the Fed to lower interest rates? Is the entire 'anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment' thing based on a bad burrito the President ate?"

Apparently, we're making policy decisions that will cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives on attempts to decode the President's facial tics. I'd frankly be more comfortable with haruspicy.

Comments

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Man... I'm speechless. I think I'll stick with grimacing.

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

what kind of flowery reporting is *that*? O_o

I was expecting:

Then George, his strong jaw silhouetted against the evening sky leapt upon his trusty steed, Rumsfeld. "Don't go, George! It's madness! You can't defeat the cameljockeys on your own!" wept Condoleeza in her gingham. "I must, 'Leezy. And sure, I may die, but it's my DUTY." His twin colts, Truth and The American Way blazed into the heavens as he rode into the distance...

This was a weepy novella free with Cosmo, you say?

[navrins]

...and find a way out of a negotiating dynamic that, as one aide said recently, "the Iranians were winning."

Gee, could that be because the Bush administration doesn't understand the distinction between "negotiating" and "demanding surrender?"

[the-editor.livejournal.com]

aren't we still negotiating saddam's surrender?

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I have to disagree...

How do you know what you're boss wants? Do you limit yourself to verbal communication only - to just those things that can be written down? Or do you use all available data, including non-verbal clues? A typical boss will use verbal communication to describe what they want... but will also use non-verbal communication to describe how important it is to them, and help set priorities.

So yes, I expect a certain amount of public policy to be set by the President's non-verbal communication skills, and the non-verbal communication skills of the President's senior staff. It's the appropriate tool for the job, and that's efficient, not divorced from reality.

And anyway, I've always felt that Mr. Bush was better at non-verbal communication than verbal communication. (If he was just as bad with non-verbal communication, he would not be President.) So, while I do not trust his ideology, I do trust that he didn't - for example - unintentionally start the Iraq war with a facial tic.

Kiralee