The question[:] Did he take responsibility for the false claim in his State of the Union message that Iraqhad recently sought to buy uranium in Africa? ... The President — who seemed a mite tetchy, as he often does when things aren't going well — glowered: "I take the responsibility for making the decision...to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein, because the intelligence...made a clear and compelling case [that Saddam] was a threat to security and peace."
We all heard it.
Right, but that wasn't the question, and one wonders why Bush didn't simply say, "Yep. My fault. Some hard-working guy at the National Security Council got a little overenthusiastic and stuck in that sentence. I didn't take it out. Won't do that again." End of story.
If that were the story, which it isn't. As Klein points out, the real story is Bush's character.
[T]he uranium story ... has ballast because it clarifies an aspect of George W. Bush's essential character — specifically, the problem he has with telling the truth. I am not saying Bush is a liar. Lying is witting: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." This is weirder than that. The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so — and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth of the matter. He misleads not only the nation but himself. Every worst-case Saddam scenario just had to be true, as did every best-case post-Saddam scenario. Bush's talent for self-deception extends to domestic and economic policy. (thanks to alert reader pie)
OK, so send Bush a fruitcake—he's nuts, and getting nuttier.
But suppose I accept Klein's take: Bush lies to himself over and over again, and believes his lies when he tells them to me. Does that mean he isn't lying to me? I don't think so.
As Lynyrd Skynyrd sang:
There I go lying to myself
Said I wasn’t gonna do it
Next thing you know, here I go again
Talked myself right into it
I got no one to blame except myself
I said I wasn’t gonna do it
Next thing you know here I go
Talk myself right into it
Talk myself, talk myself right into it
Talk myself, talk myself, talk myself right into it
Said I wasn’t gonna do it
Here I go again baby
One or two lies is a problem. But Bush doesn't have a problem with lying; he has a pattern of lying. "Here I go again, baby"! On to Syria! On to Iran!
And Bush has "no one to blame except himself." He just can't accept it. And it's too late for him to apologize (Klein suggests "grovel"), since his lies have killed people. Poor George. No wonder he's hiding in Crawford.
UPDATE: This just in! Thanks to Klein's analysis and alert reader Ernest Tomlinson, we now know our President is not George Bush—our President is George Costanza, who famously said:
Just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it.