Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 4 - 2005
The Ostrich Approach by Dan Froomkin 
The Ostrich Approach By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com Wednesday, May 25, 2005; 2:15 PM Confronted by serious political opposition at many turns, President Bush has come up with an across-the-board public response: Don't acknowledge any of it. Briefly addressing Monday's bipartisan compromise in the Senate, Bush yesterday hailed the part of the agreement that granted him votes on three of his stalled judicial nominees -- and simply ignored the part that keeps four others in limbo. Even as the Republican-controlled House was voting to defy his veto threat and expand federal research on stem cells, Bush yesterday held a photo-op with babies and toddlers born of leftover embryos -- and refused to address how unpopular his views are even within some in his own party. And as polls show that his Social Security proposals are bombing with the public, Bush insisted again yesterday that politicians who don't join him in talking about Social Security are the ones who will be punished by the voters. Can the strategy of denial work? Perhaps. Bush has done well in the past by defining his own reality and setting his own agenda, rather than letting others do so. Or, as he put it in a revealing ad-lib yesterday while talking about Social Security: "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." |