Q: What's A Four-Letter Word For Liar? A: Bush

Dub wouldn't know the truth if it came up and kicked him in the ass. On a day so cold in central Texas that — according to Austin humor columnist, John Kelso — the balls would be frozen off a billiard table, my daily Austin fishwrap was not delivered. So much for sleet, rain, and the dark of night. I went to the online version of the Austin fishwrap and read Paul Mulshine's latest rant about Duplicitous Dub. If this is (fair & balanced) scoring points, so be it.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
Bush is turning out to be a pretty bad liar
By Paul Mulshine

People say with assurance that George W. Bush is a man of his word, a man who means what he says and says what he means.

Well, that's the spin. In reality, he's a politician. In other words, he's a liar. That doesn't bother me. I admire a good politician, which is to say I admire a good liar.

What bothers me is that of late Bush's lies are so obvious that even the boobs can see through them. I allude, of course, to his recent attempts to placate his base with an alleged "crackdown" on illegal immigration. That's a great idea. The problem is, even the boobs can see he's lying. Here's what he said while wearing a Border Patrol jacket in Tucson, Ariz., last week: "We want to make it clear that when people violate immigration laws, they're going to be sent home, and they need to stay at home."

And here's what he said in his Saturday radio address: "Our immigration laws apply across all of America, and we will enforce those laws throughout our land."

There are more than 10 million people violating our immigration laws at this moment. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of enforcing the immigration laws against them. His goal, obvious to anyone with ears, is not to enforce the laws but to suspend them. He wants an amnesty. And he's lying about that, too.

"I oppose amnesty," he said Saturday. "Rewarding lawbreakers would encourage others to break the law and keep pressure on our border."

But Bush does indeed plan to reward those who broke the law. He wants to give them guest-worker permits good for six years. That's an amnesty.

And consider the Bush administration's push to grant driver's licenses to illegal aliens. If he's going to send home all those who are violating our immigration laws, why will the violators need driver's licenses?

I suspect that even the dimmest of the dim bulbs out there in the red states can see through this spin. But many of them are still buying the spin on the Iraq war. Bush made a speech about that last week as well, this time in Annapolis, Md. He somehow refrained from dressing up in that Navy flight suit again, but the speech was full of the usual lies and evasions that have followed since the unraveling of the mission his spin doctors once portrayed as accomplished.

Most of the speech was devoted to countering the criticisms of those who are advocating what Bush termed "an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops." The spin emanating from the Rove spin machine is that there is something inherently unpatriotic about demanding an exit strategy. One problem: The first politician to do so was none other than George W. Bush. It might have been more refreshing if he'd said something like this:

"When I was first running for the presidency back in 2000, I made a promise to the American people. I promised I wouldn't get our military tied up in nation-building exercises overseas. 'Absolutely not,' I said. I also said, 'I'm going to be judicious as to how to use the military. It needs to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear and the exit strategy obvious.'

"Well, I made a big mistake: I trusted Dick Cheney. What can I say? He sure looked like he knew what he was doing. But I managed to get 2,000 good Americans killed because Cheney and his nutty neocon pals never bothered to draw up that exit strategy I had promised. In fact, they never intended to exit Iraq at all. They thought our troops would be greeted with rose petals and we'd have permanent bases there for nation-building exercises throughout the Mideast.

"Don't worry, though. I've wised up. Cheney's in the doghouse. I'm finally releasing a national strategy for victory in Iraq. Critics may say it's a little late to be coming up with a strategy for Iraq. They're right. It's three years too late. What can I say? Cheney's an idiot. And I'm an idiot for trusting him."

That would be a good start. As I said, I'm cynical about this sort of thing. Under normal circumstances, I would never recommend that a politician actually tell the truth.

But even the boobs in his political base are starting to look at Bush's speeches on Iraq the same way they look at his speeches on illegal immigration. This is, I suspect, a rare moment when a politician might be better off leveling with the American people. If I were his spin doctor, I'd advise him to take advantage of it.

Paul Mulshine is a columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ.

Copyright © 2005 Cox Texas Newspapers, LLP

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