Posted on 08/23/2005 11:41:24 AM PDT by My2Cents
By now it should be clear that President Bush's words on the subject of Iraq have ceased connecting with the American public. His speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars is the latest - and one of the most serious to date - manifestations of the problem. The polls tell us that the American public is losing heart. A substantial majority (56%) now say that the war is going either "very badly" or "moderately badly." More than 50% now regard the war as a mistake. One-third want an immediate and total withdrawal. Maybe most fatefully: a plurality now say that they believe that the president deliberately misled the country into war.
Supporters of the war can argue that the public is mistaken, overly influenced by biased news reporting. Yes, yes. But mistaken public opinion is just as powerful as sound public opinion.
Again, supporters of the war can do our bit to try to change minds. But the biggest megaphone in the country belongs to President Bush - and much depends on whether he uses it well or badly.
He is using it very badly indeed.
Let me mention just one single but maybe decisive problem. Again and again during the Bush presidency - and yesterday most recently - the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chosen. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says ... nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.
If a president continues to do that, he is himself teaching the public and the media to ignore him - especially when the words seem (as his speech yesterday to the VFW seemed) utterly to ignore the past three months of real-world events.
The president could have made news yesterday by itemizing the reasons to regard Iraq more positively than most journalists do. He could have ticked off some of the achievements daily posted on the centcom.mil site. (Here's the latest.) He could have teased details even out of the mainstream media. (Mickey Kaus the other day noted that the reliably dour Robin Wright of the Washington Post casually mentioned in the course of her latest down-beater that Iraq has gone on a car-buying boom that has put a million new cars on the road since liberation. Kaus: "A 'car-buying boom'--another shocking failure! Don't they know about global warming?")
Or, alternatively, the president could have skipped the good news and delivered a blood, sweat, toils, and tears speech: Yes things are hard, harder in fact than expected, but the stakes remain enormous - and here is why we must win, and why I am determined to fight this thing through to victory. That would be powerful too.
As it is, though, he says nothing, and is perceived to say nothing, and soon nobody will be listening at all, if anybody still is.
I am not arguing that a president must always have something new to say. Repetition is a key part of the technique of modern communication. You have to repeat too - because the audience is so big, so fragmented, and so often inattentive. I am saying this:
1) Presidential speeches cannot seem disconnected from reality as it is perceived by a majority of the American public.
2) If the president's aides announce a major new campaign to rally public opinion - and then send the boss out to deliver a speech that contains nothing but old and disbelieved formulas - they fail him and the country.
3) If a president has nothing new to say, he can add freshness and interest to his previously stated views by presenting them in a new way. He can give an interview or a press conference, supplementing familiar arguments with new facts and stories - and showcasing his own attention to and knowledge of the situation on the ground.
4) Failing all that, he can say familiar things in an exciting and unfamiliar setting. He could return to Iraq for example to talk to the troops.
The smart people in the Bush White House can surely figure out a half dozen clever ideas. But what they are doing now - rerunning and rerunning old phrases - is failing badly at a time when this administration badly needs successes.
The glass is half empty.....
It was not a great speech. Does anyone know who is doing the speech writing these days? Frum obviously thinks he should be.
"56% of people predisposed to hate bush, war, baby killers, and large poisonous snakes..."
Some ancient wisdom: "Be ye either hot or cold. Be ye not lukewarm, as I will spew the out of my mouth..."
Hard for the President to make a convincing national security argument with his gross negligence of the country's borders.
Betrayal of the President by National Review. A once-proud conservative publication has been infiltrated fy the fifth column.
This on the very day that Iraq has passed the initial phase of a new constitution for that country...Perhaps Bush would have been smarter if he had concentrated his talk on ticking off all the accomplishments, but it also seems that Americans are like ADD children. We seem incapable of staying the course of what we knew would be a very hard and bumpy road. I certainly have my differences with some of Bush's policies (Israel giving up their land, our border policies, guest worker program) but NO ONE else would have turned the horror of 9/11 and done what this president has done and STAYED the COURSE!
You are talking like a DU-er going on about, "It doesn't matter who we run. The Diebold machines are fixed !" If your message isn't working its the fault of the man in the mirror.
Why did he go speak in front of these american haters?
Why doesn't Bush have his speechwriters give him under reported facts for recital. For instance, "did you know that there have been 3500 schools reopened?... "did you know there have been 500 new hospitals reopened?... etc. repeat the phrase over and over like a mantra. A phrase of "did you know" would, one, illustrate that the NSM media is not telling the truth about Iraq. Two, it might get the public interested in the actual facts of Iraq reconstruction. Four, it would prompt the MSM into trying to dissect these facts which would lead to, at least, a peripheral discussion of the good coming out of the troops' efforts. Four, the presidential bully pulpit is, in essence, a marketing device. I don't know who the speechwriters are but instead of marshalling the facts for his policies, they are using Bush's speeches as a cure for insomnia.
Since when is telling the truth betrayal ? Bush, like LBJ in 67, can only show his face before the most sympathetic of audiences.
America haters ? The VFW ?
I said as much yesterday after the speech and took a lot of heat for saying that it sounded like Bush was conceding the war and merely playing out the clock to dignify the fallen.
That's how it came across. It was a lousy speech. Probably the first time I've said that about W.
That's the price of success - people can start getting lazy. There are no more elections, but there is a legacy - and in the long run that's more important.
The admin. can take a lesson from its nemesis WJC - we complained that he was always campaigning even after the second term had begun. And especially when he got nailed for Monica - he was out there and taking every single advantage.
It doesn't matter that the two situations have no moral equivalency - as Frum points out, public perception is a reality, whether that perception was right or wrong. It's time to fight. The admin. should focus less on Cindy Sheehan, and more on the example of Casey.
Nothing confirms the fact that Bush has conceded the war like the removal of Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith and Bolton from his circle.
I think a visit by Bush to Iraq and meet with their Pariliment to help encourage them would help his message.
Also, he would meet troops and show that Iraq is changing and getting safe.
If that doesn't show an un american intent I don't know what does?
Just cause you fought in a war 60 or 40 years ago (BTW for about 20 years the VFW didn't recognize Viet Nam as a foreign war) doesn't mean you support the United States today.
Bush's speeches have gone downhill since the State of the Union in 2004. Whoever prepared him for the debates should be fired. He needs some new speechwriters.
Me too.
We showed in the 20th Century that the American people will sacrifice casualties to bring democracy to European countries, but not others. Bush has to go beyond toppling a nasty dictator and bringing democracy to Iraq, to explaining why toppling the strongest islamo-fascist regime and major supporter of terror is a big victory in the war on terror. The Dims and MSM are convincing people there is no connection with the GWOT.
A final observation: The disapproval numbers include people like me who want the administration to quit fighting a P.C. war and fight this like the real war it is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.