Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Cool Hand
The Administration has been impugned, from within and without the U.S. by virtually everyone but the most loyal Bushies. I don't doubt Rice's integrity or competence. She's loyal to her boss.
|
This doesn't make sense, so far as I can see. The question is about
that utterance. I quite agree that loyalty to her boss would explain why she said something deliberately misleading -- ie, if we choose that explanation over incompetence. But that does indeed impugn her integrity, precisely by depicting her as placing party loyalty above honesty to the nation.
Quote:
|
Is spinning endemic to this White House? No. It certainly takes place there routinely, but it was practiced routinely by the previous administration too, and by the two before it. Unfortunately, to me it appears to be a byproduct of the heightened level of media scrutiny and increase in partisanship rhetoric that has been sustained since sometime after President Carter left office. Although it isn't necessary theoretically, as a practical matter I chalk it up to the business of politics. That doesn't mean I approve of the practice, but I don't credit this administration with inventing it, and I don't fault this administration for engaging in it.
|
I guess I don't see where I credited the BushII White House with inventing spin. So the relevance of this escapes me.
Compare. I think it's entirely immaterial whether Clinton's careful steps around the word 'is' absolved him of lying under some strict definition; we all know what he did, and the question of what to call it is almost otiose. Party faithful who deliberately zeroed in on the semantical question were obviously, to everyone else, doing so as a means of avoiding (perhaps even in their own minds) taking the real issue seriously. Had they replied that Clinton hardly
invented lying, what would you have thought?