The Truthy President

It wasn't long ago that Brendan Nyhan and those other crazy kids at Spinsanity decided to take a long, methodical look at Bush's rhetoric and found -- surprise, surprise -- that the jock-in-chief was no liar. But nor was he a truthteller. The anti-nuance president had the most textured, subtle stance on honesty they'd ever seen. His administration would go to extraordinary lengths, parsing verbs and torturing language, to mislead, to insinuate, to imply. But they would rarely, if ever, lie. Honor among thieves, or at least a twisted sense of humor.

Recent reports that Bush authorized a leak from the National Intelligence Estimate fit right into that pattern. See, the president can declassify classified information, rendering that information fit for reporters. If Bush authorized the leak, he declassified the information. So this famous quote of his:

"If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. "If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.

Is perfectly true. I'm sure he would want to know if there were a leak in his administration. And, had anyone violated the law, they would be taken care of. But nobody did violate the law, the President had called a quick game of Calvinball and made a leak that would have been a violation of the letter and spirit of the law a violation of merely its spirit.

And, in sum, how much worse is it to have a president selectively declassifying information in order to smear and embarrass his political opponents? A lie is bad enough, but misleading with the truth is far more pernicious. A crime is bad enough, but legalizing criminality in order to more effectively intimidate the opposition is much, much worse. This is an honest administration that works through legal methods, and somewhere, in some undisclosed location, has left the twin spirits of law and honesty bound and gagged in a basement.