Do you remember Frank Rich's September 2006 observation in " The Longer the War, The Larger the Lies"?
"You'd think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well."
According to Rich, the President banks on the American people's tolerance for the absence of truth.
So, why should even an administration down in the polls try a different tack?" he wrote. They figure: "If you're a White House stuck in a quagmire..., what's the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It's better to game the system."
And that's just what our President's last speech was -- another gaming of the system -- another example of pathological politics. He started out pale on my television. Never animated and never expressive, he delivered his speech exactly as planned -- lifelessly. Surely many if not most viewers wondered: Is he worried? Is he nervous? Is he tired? Each of these distractions was a small victory in itself.
The truth about lying is that people do it so long as it works. In his book, Telling Lies, Paul Ekman wrote, "In many deceits the victim overlooks the liar's mistakes (leaks), giving ambiguous behavior the best reading, collusively helping to maintain the lie."
So did we see a President who has never stopped lying aided by contrived ambiguity of expression - one we helped by misreading, or one who practiced his speech so often that he accidentally rid it of distracting, annoying and lie-revealing smirks to give us the plain truth?
No doubt some saw a President at his wits end dealing with unpopularity, or an ill President fighting the flu unable to gesticulate and emote.
As Michael Fox knows, "masking" is the term used to describe a locked, socially disturbing, non-expressive face. Parkinson's patients who do not know they're masking often have their intentions misread. Maybe Rush Limbaugh has some thoughts on whether the President's masking was real. Maybe Rush Limbaugh can tell us whether the President was faking at the ranch too - wizard that he is of lie detection - whether George Bush really cares what the American people think and cares more about his legacy than he said - whether the speech or the 60 Minutes version is, if either, the real President Bush. Or was the juxtaposition of the two another way to keep the American people confused and making excuses for an administration still gaming the system?
We need only return to last year's State of the Union Address to see how the deceptive shifting of focus strategy has served George Bush. On the critical issue of health care the President listed as a solution improved relationships between doctors and patients thereby distancing government from the onus of responsibility. With regard to responses to Katrina's victims he regaled us with references to justice, hope and equality instead of providing a sincere promise of housing and jobs. He reduced a nation's concern about corruption in the highest offices in the land to the petty obsession of pessimists.
Last weekend he and his handlers rather deftly shifted press attention away from speech substance to defects in style, from whether our troops should or should not leave Iraq to whether or not to have a "surge." Secretary of State Rice became the beneficiary of a ridiculous shift from well-deserved criticism to a supposed setback for feminism. Is that what you saw?
Yes, all in all, it was a good gaming week for the Bush Administration. Not bad at all.
"Courage as a Skill" by Dr. Reardon is in this month's Harvard Business Review