PROPAGANDA, NOT POLICY

Via AMERICAblog, this comes from Newsweek. Earlier in the day, a neocon in Mainstream challeneged me on my claims that the Bush White House is constantly obsessing about image and PR, rather than sound policy:

As Congress fled the capital for Thanksgiving, and Bush made his way back from a trip to Asia, White House aides were studying the political videotapes to see where they had lost control of events. Among those at fault, they decided, was GOP Sen. Bill Frist, outmaneuvered early this month by the Democrats' Harry Reid, who used a parliamentary trick to force the Senate into a secret session and demand answers on WMD issues. But White House aides concede that they, too, were at fault for having assumed that Bush was personally unassailable and that events—and explanations of them—would take care of themselves. A war-room defense was "something we did well during the campaign," said Nicolle Wallace, Bush's communications director. "Maybe incorrectly, we had hoped or presumed that wouldn't be necessary after the election."

It is. The war room now is back, staffed with many of the same people who ran it in 2004, led by the Boy Genius himself, Karl Rove. To answer the charges that Bush "deliberately misled" the country on WMD, the White House is arguing that most Democrats—and most U.N. officials and European intelligence agencies—thought Saddam had WMD, too. Bush aides argue that Democrats saw the same intel and came to the same conclusions Bush did (an assertion Democrats hotly dispute). "We recognized that we can't communicate our message effectively until we deal with this," said a top White House aide.

This is the level the White House is working on. Busy little bees buzz around, looking for the right opposition research smears or public statements that can restore the image of the Bush team in the eyes of the public. Only about 1/3 of Americans still think Bush is doing a good job, they don't trust him as a person, and don't trust his decisions on Iraq and terrorism. So, what does the "war room" under Rove focus on? Coming up with a new strategy to win in Iraq? Hell no. Like Brute, Archie, and StinkingWind, they are looking for new ways to viciously savage critics like John Murtha. Shameful, just shameful.

JC