Bush's Credibility and the Iraq War

When Josh Marshall is on a roll, it's hard to improve on what he says:

I'm hearing many conservatives say now that the White House political office is off their game. But I see no real evidence of this. The problem is more fundamental. For quite some time this White House has functioned like a heavily leveraged business, an overextended investor that suddenly gets a margin call. To extend the business metaphor, the White House has been surviving not on profits but expectations of future profits or, in other words, credibility. The White House has been able to get the public to sit tight with a lot of objectively poor news (a poor economy, big deficits, bad news from abroad) on the basis of trust.

But a combination of the manifest incompetence of the planning for post-war Iraq and the dishonesty of the build-up for the war have become increasingly difficult to defend or deny. And that's struck a grave blow against the president's credibility.

A lot of people who opposed the Iraq War were depressed that there was so much public support for it. But that's basic anthropology, "us" against "them", the foreigners, the outsiders. Every war is popular during the first 30 days. Usually longer.

But losing the public's confidence on prosecuting a war is seriously bad news for a President. (Or, in Tony Blair's case, a Prime Minister.) Despite the incredible impeachment circus, Bill Clinton managed to maintain the trust of the majority on issues of actual public policy.

But it turns out that regular people take lying about the reasons for war (and lying about the progress of the war, and not seeming to have a strategy for putting an end to a war) a lot more seriously than trying to cover up a half-baked love affair.

A lot of Bush's problems on public support for the Iraq War go back directly to the days after the 9/11 attack. He told people the sacrifices they needed to make for fighting terrorism were: shop till you drop to boost the economy, travel a lot to help the travel industry and pay less taxes.  Especially pay less taxes. In other words, he effectively promised that most voters wouldn't have to pay a price in the War on Terrorism.

That promise doesn't have much credibility left, either.

Tags: bush