The Script

It's sad when the "friendly" media begins to ignore how much they're supposed to talk you up, and starts talking you down. Sad when you can't pull off something like a simple totally staged press conference like you could in the past.

Bush has become, to the media, like Ashlee Simpson- ridiculed over how constructed and staged the whole affair is. It's condemnable, sure, but a short-sight. This Administration has been a PR construction- everything they've done has been a scripted, staged, prepared statement. Nothing has been done without first running a comb through their hair [licked, if you're Wolfowitz].

This is one reason why The Administration is an example in failed governance. When your primary priorities for any choice made rests on what happens in the PR department, you set up for failure and incomprehensible stupidity. All values are lost, corroded beneath that. And yet, that's exactly what has occured with The Administration: every step has been about selling something to the American public without disclosing all the facts, without allowing discourse and argument. Their whole process has been about their fucked Image of Values, but never about their actual values. If it were, Bush would have jumped on the Katrina problem a hell of a lot earlier. But it's never about that for these guys. Ever.

Think Progress has a snapshot. Atrios has several worthy links.