The Bush Administration is once again in
full retreat mode, this time over their lofty prediction of 2.6 million new jobs this year:
The chairman of Bush's re-election campaign, Marc Racicot, continued a general Bush administration retreat by saying the forecast of 2.6 million jobs was only a "stated goal."
"It was a theoretical discussion by an economist," he told NBC's "Today" show.
But shouldn't all this be sounding familiar by now? After all, it is standard operating procedure for BushCo.
We all remember Bush's 2002 SOTU where he pledged
$15 billion to fight AIDS. With only millions contributed so far, that number proved to be little more than a public relations ploy.
Then there was No Child Left Behind which garnered big headlines but ended up being an unfunded mandate. Many states, including Minnesota, Utah, and Virginia are preparing to, or already have, cancelled their NCLB contracts.
Of course we all remember the slippery WMD argument in Iraq. First Iraq was an imminent threat with a nuclear program. The Plame Affair downgraded Iraq to a chemical and biological weapons hoarder, with drones that could reach U.S. shores. Then Iraq was once again downgraded to only a chem/bio producer, and finally David Kay revealed Iraq to not even be that. Now BushCo is saying that the WMDs issue is moot since Iraq was a danger anyway, but the nature of the danger a weaponless Iraq posed is slightly less cloudy than Bush's head. This affair is still playing out.
Which brings us back to the present jobs prediction. Once again, grab the headlines with your fake initiative/data, then quietly retract it later and hope the people don't notice. Unfortuantely, like a runaway tornado, the White House spin has gotten out of control.
Bush wants to retract his 2.6 million figure because its vastly overambitious, but he also wants the people to remember it so that they'll think of him as stong on the economy. This situation is known as a dilemma.
There's also the fact that for once the press isn't willing to play Bush's game. They're all a little angry after being humiliated on the Iraq issue, so Bush's retraction (as well as his cohort's statement that outsourcing is good) are getting major coverage. And under the harsh lights of national media, pathic explanations like:
It was a theoretical discussion by an economist
won't cut it.
People are waking up and Bush is getting his due. Bask in it, there's more to come.