Anyone who has ever worked in PR knows that your goal is always to counter bad press with good, and pronto. And with the hearings on Capitol Hill, reaction from the Libby commutation, more GOP members calling for troop withdrawal, shelling in Baghdad's allegedly safe "Green Zone", the success of Michael Moore's "Sicko", and sex scandal plaguing one of Congress' most conservative members, The White House is in desperate need for good PR.
Unfortunately, they've created such a terrible mess of the world that there isn't a single redeeming act or story that they can draw attention to. And when they can't win our hearts and minds with heartwarming stories of patriotism, the Bush administration's PR machine falls back on its favorite technique: scare the piss out of us.
The Drudge Report posted this Houston Chronicle article this morning:
"I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board in an unusually blunt and frank assessment of America's terror threat level.
"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of al-Qaida. "We do worry that they are rebuilding their activities."
Still, Chertoff said there are not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the current threat levels nationwide. And he indicated his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaida statements, and intelligence he did not disclose.
Of course he has to go with a "gut feeling" because, lets face it, emotion is about the only thing we can't currently prove the Bush administration to be lying about. And when the man whose sworn to protect our homeland from terrorist attacks claims to have a premonition of impending doom, the small percentage (cough cough 26%) of Americans on whom this technique still works will rally around the White House, cowering in fear and urging their congressmen not to withdraw from Iraq. For every call you and I make to Pelosi or Reid's offices, a neo-con is calling a Republican and saying the exact opposite.
Terrorism has become the 800-pound gorilla in the room. It's there, it'll always be there, and we have to live with it, just as people lived with it before 9/11. Bush can swear up and down that the war in Iraq's purpose is to safeguard us from future attacks, but he won't even safeguard our harbors and ports.
Impeaching Bush is an ever-appealing option that we wish Congress would take advantage of. But right now, lame duck Bush's words are just as awful as his actions. I believe Congress has a better chance of censuring his administration than impeaching him. Think about it; they could use, as evidence, every time he's ever misled the American people. Then we could go on waiting for 2008 to roll around enjoying the peaceful sounds of crickets and not his stupid stumbling and stuttering voice telling us that U.S. Healthcare is fine, and we should just go to the E.R. when we're sick.
I don't know, what do you think?