December 02, 2003
Truth or Fiction?
Soon after news of Bush’s secret trip to Iraq broke, reports indicated that the trip was almost called off mid-flightafter the plane was spotted by a British Airways pilot.
According to a pool report from aboard Air Force One, reporters were told a British Airways pilot spotted the president’s plane and radioed, “Did I just see Air Force One?”After a long silence, the British Airways pilot, seeming to get that he was in on a secret, said, “Oh.”
However, now that no British Airways pilots have come forward to say that they did infact see the plane, the White House has begun to change the story.
Claire Buchan, White House spokeman now claims that actually, the exchange was between the BA pilot and an air traffic control tower, not between the BA pilot and AirForce1.
Or did any of it happen? Was this tall tale invented and passed on to the pool reporters travelling along with the President to make the trip seem Bush seem more heroic, more brave?
Posted by blipsman at December 2, 2003 04:55 PMI suppose you really do not know what this means.
The fact is, the American public is extremely easy to sway and what Bush did will be something that could add 5% in the polls towards his popularity. How long that could last who knows, but such a jump is something to talk about - especially in an election that would appear to be as close as it is now. However, if it were to be proven wrong, all hell might just break lose and send many people to the democratic or third party.
The fact remains that Americans are rather superficial and tend to care less about policies and more about publicity such as this.
Posted by: Adam at December 3, 2003 01:49 AMAmerican’s aren’t superficial. They’re uninspired. People are intrigued by what Bush did, because it seems risky and human. It seemed, as with the days after 9/11 that the president had stopped working as part of the GOP machinery, and had actually done something spontaneous.
If the casualties go down after this, it could be a turning point in Bush’s fortunes. But it will only be a shadow of what could be done by a real leader, and not just some Figurehead for the GOP, like Bush is.
We need a radical response to the Bush people, and we need to get out of debating the old issues. We need to start drawing the problems, and issues of these campaigns into more interesting cross-sections, and start hitting
Bush on the problematic results of his policies.
In short, we need to restructure the way we draw in and make use of the public’s attention, and do so in a way that leaves the Republicans playing catch-up. That’s how you win political victories. By redefining the playing field.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at December 4, 2003 08:03 PM
