BuzzFlash presents P.M. Carpenter

"Say What?"

by P.M. Carpenter

Not since the Johnson-Nixon era has an American president's credibility been so abysmal. Persistent lies about foreign policy -- how we got into Vietnam, why we were staying in and how we were faring militarily and politically -- forced early retirement on a discredited LBJ. Even Lyndon had had enough, already. And though Richard Nixon ran with experts when it came to foreign policy fibs, the fatuous cover-up of domestic misdemeanors chiefly strangled his credibility and finally sent him packing.

Assuming presidential history is still taught in some high schools, the above, I imagine, is at least the bare minimum that most students are asked to retain into adulthood: Johnson...Vietnam...lies...downfall; Nixon...Watergate...lies....downfall. Future history students, however, shall have an even easier time of it when asked to recall the gist of George W. Bush's downfall: He lied about everything.

Historical simplicity, which inattentive high schoolers and 43 himself love so much, is usually easy to complicate. But Bush is laying such a chronically recidivist path of policy misrepresentations and deliberate deceit, he is making retrospective clarity -- the holy historical grail -- possible. As growing majorities throughout the world find Bush truly in-credible, his credibility gap also expands at home. If it continues to swell into 2004 ... well, that is why half the Democratic Party can be found only in Iowa and New Hampshire these days.

One could start tracking the president's in-credibility trail by ticking off the many policy bait and switches committed in short transitional order, from campaign Bush to Oval Office Bush, but limited space prevents. Let it suffice that for the already suspicious as well as the unsuspecting, early and abrupt reversals of advertised policy laid bare that this president's interest in credibility would take a back seat to his hard-right, almost childlike, ideology.

Yet as it turns out, those were the good old days. Compared to the president's erratic course of the last few months, Bush II's Phase I was a model of political chastity. The White House has now abandoned even the pretense of critical logic and thoughtful moderation -- in a word, credibility -- on both domestic and foreign policy. The nation and the world find themselves captive to the mysterious fixations of the president's mental rigor mortis.

At home, Bush's 5-volume projected budget reads like an advanced study in fiscal suicide. While the budget excludes little line items such as the cost of war in Iraq, the cost of rebuilding Iraq, the cost of military operations in Afghanistan and the cost of future tax changes, the White House still casually tells us to expect a bit of revenue shortfall over the next 5 years -- roughly, let's say, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of around $1.1 trillion. What goes to credibility, however, is that 2 years ago the White House puffed the Laffer-ble prediction that its fiscal policies would ensure a 1.5-trillion-dollar surplus, especially, of course, since it was slashing revenues.

Even more to the issue of credibility, Bush, in last year's State of the Union address, proclaimed that the "budget will run a deficit that will be small and short lived." To refresh, that came after the administration began realizing terrorism's fiscal impact, during a recession's negative-revenue effects, and during the administration's sights-setting on Iraq (the ultimate costs of which have been estimated at anywhere from $120 billion to $2 trillion).

As for foreign policy credibility? Face it, George: When French criticism starts making sense, you know you're soupe.

The president has buck-and-winged around the putative inexorable logic of war to the point of global ridicule and contempt. If it is Monday and the sun is shining, Bush calls the world to arms because Saddam is a despotic barbarian; if Tuesday and cloudy, because the swarthy rodent possesses wicked WMDs. Given other days of the week and climate conditions, we are exhorted to pounce militarily because Saddam is in league with al Qaeda; he might be in league with al Qaeda; he might opt to be in league with al Qaeda; he has an unhealthy interest in chemistry; he is, by implication, the only national leader in defiance of a United Nations resolution; Colin Powell has a photo collection; and so on, and so on. If one motive fails to catch fire with the public, the White House simply trots out another. A single motive or consistent combination of motives might have inspired, but the White House's hysterical explanations de jour have only managed to eviscerate the one essential of broad-based war-making support: credibility.

But then again, the White House could hardly air the fundamental reasons behind its martial spirit: that war is a dandy distraction from carrying out domestic policies contrary to good sense, and that the administration harbors a fanatical band of jingoistic ideologues who have wet-dreamed of this war since Papa wimped out in 1991. At a Camp David meeting just four days after al Qaeda's deadly assault of 9/11, for example, testosterone-pumped Donald Rumsfeld piped up with, "Is this the time to attack Iraq?" Note his use of the definite article, "the" time. Once a pretext availed, the fix was in.

One of the many potentially tragic repercussions from Bush & Co.'s credibility abyss is wholesale public cynicism in the event of an actual threat. Code red? Will anyone be more alert? The boy from Crawford has cried wolf so often, next time -- "the" time -- perhaps no one will listen.