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The Nation's Pulse

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HOST TIM RUSSERT BEGAN the segment this way:

"Frank Rich in New York, let me start with you and read for you and our viewers your column from this very Sunday morning in the New York Times.

"'...For Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by fictional, more salable ones. We wouldn't be invading Iraq to further Rovian domestic politics or neocon ideology; we'd be doing so instead because there was a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and because Saddam was on the verge of attacking America with nuclear weapons. The facts and intelligence had to be fixed to create these whys...'"

With this, the "Bush lied" meme, contemporary political storytelling moves into meta-narrative: The Democrats tell a story about Bush supposedly telling a story. And the creators of the "lied" story and its critics openly talk about it as a story and comment on its epistolary virtues or shortcomings.

Indeed, the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes was on Meet the Press that day, too. Hayes wrote the definite debunk of one leg of the three-legged "Bush lied" story, "Iraq had absolutely no connection with Al Qaeda," in "Case Closed" two years ago. It summarized captured Iraqi intelligence showing a long, involved connection between Saddam's agents and al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden personally. (Hayes has since expanded the article with new material into a book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, so it's not like this information hasn't been widely available.)

Hayes didn't get a chance to say much. And what he did say sounded more like theater criticism than straight factual counter: "...The Democrats, in order to push the 'Bush lied' narrative, have to almost pretend that they were never on board in the first place." Earlier, he refers to the "'Bush lied' construct.'"

THE SECOND LEG OF "BUSH LIED," "Iraq didn't attack us," is true, but irrelevant. Way back on June 1, 2002, President Bush announced a new doctrine of foreign policy at a speech at West Point, the doctrine of pre-emption. We would no longer wait for an attack to take military action. The speech contained the famous line, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long." President Bush followed up this address in various public venues, saying that waiting for a smoking gun would be too late, that we couldn't wait for Chicago to be in flames to justify attacking a potential enemy.

So the Democrats are setting their story against a Bush story that never was told in the first place. And not only in this case, but in the third leg of the "lied" story, too: "Iraq had no WMD/Iraq had no nuclear weapons program."

Sure, it did. Saddam had outsourced his nuclear program to Libya. Iraqi scientists worked there, with materials obtained from North Korea. That was the program Muammar Qaddafi gave up to the U.S. after the Iraqi war. He physically gave the program to us. We keep it at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

YOU CAN PURSUE THE STORY of story in all kinds of directions: To post-modern theory ("There is no truth, only competing personal narratives"), to the disconnect from traditional supports, comforts, and values wrought by modern education and media, and so forth. One thing for sure, Democrats are better at it than Republicans. Republicans keep pointing to eternal verities, while, increasingly, Democrats don't have any. They can just spool it out, as Henry Miller, a famously facile narrator, once wrote.

My older son and I were driving around last Sunday afternoon doing errands, listening to various NPR programs between stops. One of those programs examined the media. The big news of the previous week had been the indictment of Scooter Libby in the so-called "CIA leaks" case. (Who re-named this one? Till just about a month ago, it used to be referred to as "Plame-gate" or something else equally awkward.) A couple of reporters appeared with the two hosts, and together the four of them starting holding an ad-lib and (to them) hilarious story conference about how they'd make a movie out of the case.

Bud is 11, and he hears a lot about media bias. But this was the first time he had actually heard it being created, right in front of him. Yes, it was a joke, deciding what actor would play Scooter Libby or Dick Cheney, and what actress would portray Valerie Plame. But it was also serious, really. The participants were having way too much fun for it to be anything but.

"They're making it up!" Bud exclaimed.

So how far could it go? We should be glad we're a free country, and we should fight to stay that way. Because, as the awful totalitarianisms of the 20th century revealed, storytelling can carry a nation a long, long way indeed.

topics:
Foreign Policy, Education, Business, Books, Law, Military, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons