Brendan Nyhan

As I argued on Monday, the idea that Bush’s speech this morning will sway voters is wrong. Research shows that presidents have little ability to shape public opinion in a non-crisis atmosphere. All the spin in the world won’t change the fact that approval of wars and presidents is primarily driven by fundamentals.

Oliver, a reader, posted a comment pointing us to a Washington Post article making a similar point:

Bush’s historical burden is that there is no recent precedent for a leader using persuasion to reverse a steady downward slide for a military venture of the sort he is facing. Only clear evidence of success in Iraq is likely to alleviate widespread unease about the central project of this presidency, public opinion experts and political strategists say.

Lately, elites from across the political spectrum have been calling on President Bush to level with the American people about the status of the war in Iraq. That’s all well and good. But I’m sick of the pro-war fantasy that doing so will change public opinion. It won’t.

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert asked Sen. John Warner this question, and Warner bought right into the unstated premise:

RUSSERT: Should the president go before the American people with a map of Iraq and say, “Let me explain to you what is going on in the war. This area’s secure. This area is difficult. This area we had captured but now the terrorists have gotten it back”? Take people through it in a very honest, straightforward way, a status report, an update.

WARNER: Tim, I’m old enough. I served in the last year of World War II in the Navy. Franklin D. Roosevelt did just exactly that. In his fireside talks, he talked with the people, he did just that. I think it would be to Bush’s advantage. It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of this concern that understandably our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public, and we’ve got to stay firm for the next six months. It is a critical period, as Joe and I agree, in this Iraqi situation to restore full sovereignty in that country and that enables them to have their own armed forces to maintain their sovereignty.

And today Andrew Sullivan featured an email expressing similar sentiments:

Imagine how much public opinion could be shaped and how much criticism could be defused if he simply addresses the American people to tell us what ‘the course’ that we must supposedly ‘stay’ is. What IS the mission? How many Iraqi battalions being independent and battle-ready will it take before we can at least begin to draw down? When can we expect this to occur? What is he doing to draw the Sunnis more into the political process and away from the insurgents? What is he doing with neighboring nations like Iran to stop their meddling and to seek their help in securing the borders? There are countless other questions – the answers of which could be used to explain in detail our progress, our plan, and a clear direction for America in the Middle East.

But when he is silent and hiding away from his critics, it’s only reasonable for people to begin to assume that he has no progress to report, no plan, and no direction. It would be sad if the hard work of people like Gen. Casey and Zalmay is all for naught because their boss was too much of a fool to explain the rather significant benefits of what they’re now doing in Iraq.

The idea that people’s opinions about the war will suddenly change if Bush “levels” with the public is mostly nonsense. Dramatic presidential speeches on well-known issues rarely move poll numbers. Presidents can strategically appeal to public opinion when it is already in their favor, but actual persuasion is far more difficult (references: On Deaf Ears, Politicians Don’t Pander, Who Leads Whom?). As a result, it’s unlikely that the White House will be able to change the minds of the growing majority of Americans who think the war was a mistake.

I recently walked by a gym television turned to CNN’s “Situation Room” and the “situation” described in the big on-screen graphic was this: “Alleged Lego Thief Behind Bars.” What a situation! Thank goodness we have seventeen plasma screens to cover that breaking story.

Last week I reiterated my prediction that John McCain’s poll numbers will plummet among liberals and independents as he does what’s necessary to win the Republican presidential nomination, which apparently includes endorsing George Wallace Jr., who has spoken four times to a racist hate group. Political ambition has a high price.

Today’s New York Times brings more McCain news that is sure to give liberals heartburn — during a visit to Mississippi, he praised Trent Lott as “the finest leader we’ve had” in the Senate and appeared to endorse Lott’s return to the GOP leadership:

During an appearance last weekend at the University of Mississippi, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, predicted that Mr. Lott would become Republican leader again, adding, “I will tell anyone that of all the majority leaders we’ve had in the United States Senate, I believe that Trent Lott was the finest leader we’ve had.”

Let’s review just what a fine leader Lott was:

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Any bets on when the bipartisan McCain lovefest will end?

(Footnote: It’s ironic that Virginia Senator George Allen, who is seen by many as the leading Republican presidential candiate for 2008, is running away from his ugly racial past even as McCain goes in the opposite direction. I guess the sweet spot for Republican presidential candidates is somewhere in between them.)

I just pulled the transcript from the House debate over the phony GOP resolution calling for withdrawal from Iraq because I want to highlight how Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) went even further than his colleagues in his attacks on dissent.

Early in his speech, Johnson offered the standard line:

America, and the Congress, must stand behind our men and women in uniform because they stand up for us every minute of every day.

Any talk, even so much as a murmur, of leaving now just emboldens the enemy and weakens the resolve of our troops in the field. That is dangerous. If you do not believe me, check out al Jazeera. The withdrawal story is on the front page. We cannot do that to our fellow Americans over there.

It takes incredible chutzpah to say that “even so much as a murmur” about withdrawal “emboldens the enemy” after Johnson’s own party introduced a resolution designed to forced a debate over withdrawal.

But Johson later went even further, directly accusing his fellow members of Congress of seeking to “embolden the enemy”:

However, sadly, some here want to embolden the enemy by saying we just cut and run. That is just irresponsible and unconscionable.

I’m amazed someone hasn’t tried to have Johnson’s words stricken from the record. Usually, the Republican tactic is to say that advocates of withdrawal are unintentionally emboldening the enemy. To say that Iraq war critics “want to embolden” the enemy is essentially an accusation of treason.

As I’ve previously mentioned, Deborah Solomon’s harsh interviewing style makes me uncomfortable, but she got off a great line in her interview last week with French philosopher Jean Baudrillard:

BAUDRILLARD: France is a byproduct of American culture. We are all in this; we are globalized. When Jacques Chirac says, “No!” to Bush about the Iraq war, it’s a delusion. It’s to insist on the French as an exception, but there is no French exception.

SOLOMON: Hardly. France chose not to send soldiers to Iraq, which has real meaning for countless individual soldiers, for their families and for the state.

BAUDRILLARD: Ah, yes. We are “against” the war because it is not our war. But in Algeria, it was the same. America didn’t send soldiers when we fought the Algerian war. France and America are on the same side. There is only one side.

SOLOMON: Isn’t that kind of simplistic reasoning why people get so tired of French intellectuals?

Ouch.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has done laudable work fact-checking the White House, but this shot at the Vice President is taken out of context at best:

As vice president, Cheney has always played the hard-line Cardinal Ratzinger to Bush’s sunny John Paul II. Before the war, Cheney asserted that Iraq had “reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

Here’s what I wrote at Spinsanity about the “reconstituted” quote:

Cheney and his aides later said he misspoke, and the evidence supports their claim. The Vice President said four other times in the interview that Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons, not that Iraq already had them, and no one else in the administration ever claimed that Iraq had a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the statement makes no sense – “reconstituted nuclear weapons” carries the implausible implication that Saddam had nuclear weapons at one point, gave them up, and then rebuilt them.

I want to reiterate my offer to send a free copy of All the President’s Spin to any journalist or high-profile blogger who would like one. In addition, I want to let everyone know that there are now two ways to look up information from the book if you don’t have your copy handy — Amazon.com’s Search Inside The Book feature and Google Print, both of which offer full-text search of the book (though you can only view a few pages at a time). There’s no substitute for reading the whole thing, but we also want ATPS to be a lasting resource, and these text search options will help make it accessible and useful long into the future. Both links will be permanently available on the left sidebar under the image of the book’s cover.

I received an email solicitation (PDF) from the conservative magazine Human Events a couple of weeks ago that begins like this:

Did you know WMDs have been found in Iraq?

• 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
• 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents
• Chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas)
• Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas

This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet, Americans overwhelmingly believe U.S. and coalition forces found NO weapons of mass destruction.

The question is… WHY do they believe this lie?

The solicitation then goes on to urge recipients to subscribe to Human Events. But I want to focus on the bullet list, which treats readers like fools. Every single one of the claims that the magazine makes is misleading, as I can show after ten minutes of Google searches:
–1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium – This material had been under seal at the Tuwaitha complex, a former nuclear research facility, since 1992. It wasn’t removed from Iraq by the US until 2004.
–1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents – According to the Washington Post, a military spokesman said these agents were found in an insurgent lab created after the invasion.
–Chemical warheads containing cyclosarin – The head of Polish military intelligence said the warheads are from the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s.
–Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas – These materials, which the US removed from Iraq in 2004 along with the enriched uranium mentioned above, were actually used for medical and industrial purposes according to an Energy Department spokesman, who said that “much of the material was ‘in powdered form, which is easily dispersed’” (my emphasis), not that it was “meant” for dispersal.

With magazines like this, it’s no wonder that so many Americans believe we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Here’s a classic of the “dog bites man” genre: “Leaves: Pretty, but lot of work”. Yes.