OxBlog

# Posted 3:12 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

BUSH FLIP-FLOPS (AND FLIPS) AT THE WORST POSSIBLE MOMENT: And the NYT is eating him alive. In contrast to the Times' front page splash, the WaPo is running a page six story that begins

President Bush said in an interview broadcast Monday that the war on terrorism cannot be won in the traditional sense of victory.

But the WaPo seems to have recognized that it was underplaying and underspinning the story. Right now, it has a headline story up on its website that begins:

President Bush rushed Tuesday morning to reverse his assertion that the war on terror cannot be won, trying to deflect a planned barrage of Democratic attacks by telling the nation's largest veterans group that "we are winning, and we will win."

Tellingly, Mike Allen is the author of both WaPo articles. In an effort to emulate Bush and Kerry, he's flip-flopping too!

So, is there real substance to Bush's conflicting states about our chances of "winning" the war on terror? At a human level, it is entirely understandable for a confident and decisive leader (any leader, not specifically George Bush) to have moments of doubt. In fact, most of us want to know that our leaders are able to question their optimistic premises.

Moreover, Bush's flip-flop on the war doesn't have much detail to it. It's not like Kerry's support and opposition for a specific war or his claim to voted for a specific measure before voting against it.

But in the midst of hard-fought and divise campaign, Bush's comments represent a colossal failure. If Giuliani is going to bash Kerry's indecisiveness while praising Bush's decisive leadership, then George Bush needs to act the part.

Going further, Bush's comments make him look like a buffoon who is being handled by his subordinates. They feed into stereotypes of him as too stupid to be our chief-executive.

Now let me just state that I don't agree with any of these descriptions of Bush. But simply speaking from a strategic perspective, Republicans need to recognize how damaging such incidents are.

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