Meet the 'New Bush'

Bush: "The campaign is over. Yes, he does."

In other words: This time I'm telling you the truth. Honest.

Deja Vu

Bush's comments yesterday -- and the aversion within the traditional media to actually calling what he did lying -- are reminiscent of an earlier incident that I chronicled in my June 1 column, Bush's Lie . As I wrote at the time: "[W]ith credibility a paramount issue for the White House these days, it's worth noting that when asked about Treasury Secretary John Snow's future last week, President Bush could easily have ducked the question, or told the truth -- but instead, he chose to lie about it."

One Reporter's Take

James Carney writes in Time about Bush's press conference, and starts off with a positive spin on Bush's new candor:

"Give President Bush credit for being honest about his dishonesty."

But Carney then indicates that reporters soon had reason to believe it was a lie and that Rumsfeld's days were in fact numbered:

"After Bush declared his unbending support for Rumsfeld last week, it was telling how few aides and advisers to the President were willing to reaffirm what the President had said. When asked about Bush's Rumsfeld comments, one official didn't try to hide the pain the question caused him. He wouldn't talk about it. He and others made it clear that the President said 'what he had to say.' In other words, Bush's support for Rumsfeld would last only until the last polling station closed on Tuesday night."

Carney then attacks Bush for not having fired Rumsfeld earlier: "[T]he move that might actually have helped Bush and congressional Republicans when it mattered, before election day -- would have been to fire Rumsfeld last week, last month or last year. . . .

"[B]y waiting so long he let his pride get in the way of a much-needed change in Iraq policy. That mistake didn't just cost the Republicans seats in the Congress. It may have cost lives."

But here's my question: Don't those reporters who apparently knew it was a lie -- but didn't tell anybody -- bear some responsibility as well? What other lies do the reporters know about, but choose not to report?

The 'Honest Lie'?

Walter Shapiro writes in Salon: "In the annals of presidential truth-telling (a thin volume), there is no obvious precedent for Bush's startling admission that he lied to reporters when he offered Don Rumsfeld a strong presidential vote of confidence just before the election.... Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution whose knowledge of the White House dates back to his days as a young Eisenhower speechwriter, called it 'the honesty of the honest lie. Bush was telling the truth when he said he lied.'

Old Bush

There were still some sign of Old Bush yesterday, of course.