This story by the Washington Post’s Dan Eggen about President Bush and bailout legislation was ridiculous even before Congress enacted such legislation. The story is called “Bush’s Warnings of Danger Are No Longer as Powerful.”
Eggen contrasts the congressional reaction to President Bush’s arguments for passing the bailout to its reaction when he wanted authority to invade Iraq and cut taxes, for example. Eggen finds that Congress was more receptive on the earlier occasions.
Well, I guess the effect of being implored by a president to vote a certain way is not as powerful when the president has four more months to serve and a favorability rating of under 30 percent as it is when the president is in his second year and his favorability rating is around 70 percent.
But Eggen wants to make a different point. He wants to claim that Bush was having trouble persuading members through “the politics of fear” because he has used this approach too often. As is the case with many liberals, Eggen still seems fixated on the Iraq war debate of 2002. So he wants to suggest that the Bush administration’s flawed assessment of the situation with respect to WMD in Iraq (based on flawed intelligence) is causing legislators to discount his claims of a financial crisis.
There is no evidence of such a connection. The best Eggen could do was quote a liberal Democrat who said, “Like the Iraq war and the Patriot Act, this bill is fueled on fear and hinges on haste.” But even this Congressman didn’t say that his conclusion about whether a financial crisis exists is influenced by the extent to which WMD were found in Iraq. No public official would be silly enough to say this.
That’s why it’s good to have the MSM.
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