McClellan: Too Honest to be Effective?

Ari Fleischer is long gone as the White House press spokesman, but maybe he was worried he was getting rusty, or maybe he just missed lying to the media, but he fired off this letter to The New York Times in response to a Paul Krugman column that recalled Fleischer's warning to comedian Bill Maher that "Americans should watch what they say." Unfortunately for Fleischer’s attempt at revisionist history, they keep transcripts of these things, as Slate points out here. It’s a reminder, says Timothy Noah, that Fleischer “was not just a liar but (to borrow a phrase coined by Newsweek's Evan Thomas) an exuberant liar.”

Los Angeles Times reporter Maura Reynolds on the Bush administration’s approach to the news media: “It was easier to cover the Kremlin than it is to cover this administration. The main difference I find is that the Russians at least were upfront about when they weren’t going to talk to you and when they weren’t going to tell you something. This administration tries to say they’ve told you something ... or have answered your question when in fact they haven’t.”

Republicans campaigning for office this year have been provided with talking points that include the assertion that “global warming is not a fact,” among others—a notion that appears to support the contention that when the empirical evidence fails to match the dogma, the empirical evidence should be thrown out. But apparently even some moderate Republicans find it implausible that voters will swallow this rhetoric. Rep. Mike Castle, (R-Del.), says the strategy is too negative and defensive and doesn’t address the fact that pollution continues to be a health threat. “If I tried to follow these talking points at a town hall meeting with my constituents, I’d be booed,” said Castle. Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords, meanwhile, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become an independent, called the memo “outlandish” and an attempt to deceive voters.

El artículo completo en: Holmes Report