I wonder if George W. Bush believes what he says--if he has hypnotized himself--or whether he bets that the media is just too lazy and has too short an attention span to keep fact-checking him. It's an interesting question. I never had any insight into what the media affairs people really thought.

TNR Online | Stop Him Before He Lies Again (print) |

Back in Houston last week, President George W. Bush again told what is gradually becoming his favorite political anecdote: "You know, when I was one time campaigning in Chicago, a reporter said, `Would you ever have a deficit?' I said, `I can't imagine it, but there would be one if we had a war, or a national emergency, or a recession.' Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta." Even we're getting a little tired of pointing out that this story is almost certainly untrue. No reporter who covered the 2000 campaign can recall Bush ever having said anything like this; and despite repeated inquiries from the media, the White House has never produced any evidence that he did. (There are numerous examples, by contrast, of candidate Bush pledging not to touch the Social Security surplus under any condition.) The first public mention of Bush's exceptions came, conveniently enough, last August--just as it became evident that the tax cut and slowing economy would likely force him to dip into Social Security. Why does the truth or falsity of this anecdote matter? Because perhaps the key policy issue that divided Bush and Al Gore during the 2000 race was the Texas governor's massive tax cut proposal. Bush claimed there was enough money to continue paying down the debt, fund any additional spending needs that might arise, and still afford his tax cut; Gore claimed there wasn't. Gore was right. Bush's budget forecasts were a tapestry of rosy predictions, accounting gimmicks, and outright falsehoods that were already unraveling well before September 11. (Remember the trillion-dollar contingency fund that Bush was promising little more than one year ago? Us neither.) This is why Bush insists on reciting his fraudulent "war, recession, or national emergency" story at every possible opportunity--it gets him off the hook for the mountain of economic dishonesty he shoveled in order to pass the tax cut. And it's why as long as he keeps telling the story, we'll keep pointing out that it is almost certainly a lie.

Posted by DeLong at June 24, 2002 06:22 PM