Inane? Perhaps you could tell that to Card and Rove.
White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.
The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.
The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.
"From a marketing point of view," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, "you don't introduce new products in August."
A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year.
"Everybody felt that was a moment that Americans wanted to hear from him," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser. Sept. 11 will also be a time, Mr. Rove said, "to seize the moment to make clear what lies ahead." nytimes.com
Wasn't JohnM's fault the WH handlers had to go blabbing to the press about their upcoming marketing campaign. Personally, I think all the war marketeering is inane, but I got sort of a bad attitude about propaganda. First casualty and all that. |
