I was driving home today and had Hardball on the satellite radio (Man I love XM), and Matthews had as his guest Sen. John McCain.
At one point, they had gotten on the topic of Putin and Russia, with McCain railing on Putin for his actions in the recent past, like a permanent base in Georgia and the interference with the Yushenko election.
All the while, I was thinking to myself "Isn't he talking about the same guy into whose eyes Bush looked and saw a good man?"
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As if Matthews had received a psychic message, he asked that very question.
McCain had a hard time responding, and in fact the only points he seemed to be able to make in response were that Putin kept asking why Bush fired Rather, and that Putin was going to have to answer for his actions.
Matthews tried to press the point, but McCain dodged effectively, never answering the question.
So, is the administration's talking points machine broken? If so, we should be moving to take action.
In the last few weeks, there have been more and more examples of "say one thing, do another" than you can shake a stick at. This isn't unexpected, at least by those of us who have been turning a critical eye towards the administration. Frankly, I've been wondering what took so long. And yet, it seems to have little real effect.
Some have posited that the reason for the lack of effect is that there is such a steady stream of these that one supersedes the next and none seems to really have time to take hold. An example of this most recently is the Gannon/Guckert story. The investigation in the blogosphere took off, and suddenly, there's a release of the Bush "secret" tapes. The focus is moved from one topic to another, less nasty one, by making it appear to be more important.
Magicians call this misdirection. Look at this hand here while I tuck the handkerchief in my pocket. But did you know that one of the worst audiences for a magician is a group of children? The reason is that children have a much less developed sense of "logic". They haven't learned the physical cues that fool them into looking at the wrong hand. They're still looking at the last place they saw the handkerchief. Misdirection doesn't work.
And that, dear reader, is what we're up against. This administration is full of magicians, highly skilled at misdirection. We bloggers, however, are like children - we're still looking at the first move. When they said "WMD" we said "where?" - When they said "Al Qaeda", we said "what about the WMD". When they said "Swift Boat", we said "what about failure in Iraq?". Every step along the way, they have been trying misdirection, and we have been focused on the original issue.
Children are great finders of basic truth. Adults, very often, are more easily fooled. Children look for a basic truth, while adults will try to rationalize to an answer that they are comfortable with. That's why the administration's misdirection has worked on so many Americans. It's very hard to believe you voted for lies. So you develop your own version of the truth to support your beliefs.
But at some point, the structure begins to fail. To continue with the magician analogy, there's a reason why magicians have a firm belief that you should not repeat a trick for the same audience. If you do, the misdirection is less likely to work each time you repeat it. They're looking for the flaws, the trick.
And that is what I think is starting to happen with this administration. Even their strongest supporters have seen these tricks too many times. The secret's getting out. We've been treated to smoke and mirrors, not the real thing.
Which gets me back to my original thought - is the talking points machine broken? Have they spun so many of these fabrications and obfuscations that they can no longer support the machinery? I think McCain's responses today show that this is exactly what is happening. On the one hand, he's pointing out what is logically obvious - that Putin, ex-KGB guy that he is, is simply doing exactly what you'd expect of an ex-KGB guy. No real surprise, right? But where the talking points machine failed is that this is the guy that Bush claimed was "a good man". Those who want to believe in the President want to believe he can look into a man's soul by looking into his eyes. "He said it, I believe it, and that's all there is to it." - sound familiar?
But now, even the faithful are seeing the contradictions pile up. The machine can't keep up with the fabrications. And this is where we must exploit the chink in the armor.
We must go back to every falsehood, "misstatement" and misdirection to make our case. We must make a simple, two-column list of statements and fact.
For example:
Statement - Iraq has developed and his stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
Reality - False, there were never any weapons of mass destruction
Just start piling these up. One by one. No conjecture, just proven facts - believe me there are plenty to make the case. Memorize them. Be able to recollect them on cue. Why? Because the weight of the truth eventually collapses the flimsy structure of falsehoods. Granted, these guys are geniuses at the art of deception, but it's still deception. It will fail. Always does. And it does when we keep coming back to the original truth before the misdirection. Be like the children at a magician's show. Don't look away. Keep pointing at the other hand.
Their machine is breaking down. Keep putting wrenches into the gears.