Stab in the Back not so Painful
Let me recite a funny story. A clergyman and a politician arrive to the Heaven’s gate. Saint Peter ushers each of them to their heavenly homes. The politician gets luxurious quarters, while the priest gets a room in a dormitory. The clergyman exclaims, perplexed: “Father, how come it is so unfair? I fasted, prayed, and now I get just a tiny bit of what the politician gets!” Saint Peter replied: “There are many priests in Heaven, while just one politician has arrived recently. So, he gets maximal privileges.”
In the entire 20th century, just one politician from a NATO member state earned an informal rank of ‘sainthood candidate’. It was Robert Schuman, who is considered one of the founders of modern Europe. He was never found to be saying lies in public speeches. Schuman’s biography mentions his daily communions and ascetic lifestyle. Here again, an exception from the rules. Yet, he has not been canonized so far: Vatican is waiting for a miracle involving the name.
Obviously, George Bush is not one of those exceptions. His administration can hardly be called crystally honest. For instance, the White House assured before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had mass destruction weapons and that a military operation only could save the world from the dangerous maniac. Later, it turned out that Saddam did not have these weapons, while all contrary data came from unreliable sources. Yet, in the Saddam case, Bush still can insist that he was “under a delusion”, claiming that Iraqi oppositionists told U.S. intelligence about tons of poisoning substances hidden by the dictator, and the administration naively believed them. Certainly, naïveté is a drawback for a politician, but not as grave as an elaborate and cynical lie.
Moreover, lies can be of different kinds. The intelligence data can be fixed up a little (surely, with best intentions!) or incomplete information (a sort of half-truth) can be given to the press. Such experiments might damage a politician’s image or the course of his campaign, but will not produce a bomb explosion effect. After all, most politicians hardly remind saints indeed, and citizens have no illusions to that account.
Meanwhile, McClellan’s revelations might be an evidence of something else: of the society’s intentional misinformation by the U.S. top officials. Here is something reminding of Watergate which cost Richard Nixon his presidency.
However, there is just a slight suggestion of it, because McClellan’s wording is quite vague. Right, he had “unknowingly passed along false information”, an affair in which not only Rove and Libby (already found guilty of perjury), but also Bush and Cheney are mixed. McClellan refrains from giving further comment. Apparently, he is not attracted to a scandalous exposer’s fame. If so, it is just another moral blow at the Republic administration, to which it is used, and not a fatal event for it.
Alexei Makarkin, deputy director general of the Political Technologies Center.
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 22, 2007
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