Bush's lies vs. Clinton's lies

Lying about war is more serious than lying about sex -- which is why the president's free ride is coming to an end.

By Nicholas Thompson

July 24, 2003 | Conservative Republicans like to compare George W. Bush to Ronald Reagan, characterizing him as a masculine Everyman, traditionally conservative and regularly underestimated because of his low-key manner. Liberals like to compare him with his father, who seemed Reagan's tightly wound, Ivy League, career-climbing opposite -- and a one-term president to boot.

Now a different former president is the dominant comparison: Bill Clinton. And that bodes very poorly for our commander in chief.

In the past week, as the White House first reeled from plummeting polls and the Iraq intelligence flap, and then beamed at footage of Uday and Qusay's demise at the Mosul corral, references to Clinton have come both from those taking aim at the president and those buffering his image.

For opponents, Bush's notorious 16 words in his State of the Union address erroneously talking up the Iraqi nuclear threat make up a far more important prevarication than Clinton's 11 ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.") Moreover, the White House's fine parsing of the phrase matches Clinton's floundering over the definitions of "is" and "sexual relations." Consequently, critics argue, the political price that Bush pays for his lie should more or less match what Clinton paid. The stakes, after all, have been wildly disproportionate.

For Bush supporters, Clinton serves as a useful foil. As Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, and others have recently noted, Clinton bombed Iraq and a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan based on similarly shaky intelligence. Clinton exaggerated Saddam's weapons capabilities, too.

Furthermore, Republicans are starting to point out that Democrats could face a blowback they're all too familiar with. If the Democrats kick Bush's shins over Iraq too long, the public will eventually turn on them, just as it turned on the Republicans during Clinton's impeachment mess. The Democratic base wants a battle, but most moderates are just happy Saddam Hussein is gone.

"If Democrats are talking about uranium, and Republicans are talking about religious freedom and liberty, that's a pretty good trade," says Dan Schnur, a Republican consultant who points out that the Democrats are in danger of falling into the same trap his party did with Lewinsky. The longer the Democrats criticize Bush on the issue, Schnur says, the harder it will be for them to ever change the subject.

There are, of course, differences. Clinton's lie was meant to cover up a personal scandal; Bush's partisans can charitably interpret his lie as merely the result of a chain of people in the White House each adding too much rum to the eggnog. Clinton's lie was completely a personal failure; Bush's was a failure of the complete administration.

But the similarities are greater and more important. For one, both lies have stuck because of their backdrops. If the United States weren't losing a soldier a day and pouring a billion dollars a week into a zone of increasing chaos, no one would remember to question Bush's months-old prevarications. If Clinton hadn't been facing persistent accusations about his womanizing, no one might have known about his trysts with the intern. The Niger fib fit into a pattern of deception about intelligence and Saddam's weapons capacity, just as Clinton's Lewinsky dalliance fit into a pattern of questions about his personal affairs.

The fundamental similarity is that both liars were called on the carpet. And for Bush, that will likely mean an end to what has been an impressive free ride.

In his first two years, Bush lied and exaggerated repeatedly. He lied about the number of stem cell lines available, the benefits for poor people of his tax cuts, his commitment to carbon dioxide emissions reductions, the cost of the war, and much more. Until now, Bush has escaped basically scot-free from each fib.

He successfully tagged Al Gore as a liar during the presidential campaign and maintained a pure image ever since. According to Clinton's press secretary, Mike McCurry: "The press had high expectations of Clinton, which he did not succeed in meeting, and they had low expectations of Bush, which he surpassed. Plus, they like him more as a guy."

The last two weeks could irrevocably tarnish Bush and his administration. Even if vindicated, his prevarications will become part of the basic narrative about Bush that reporters and the public pull up. As with Clinton, every action will be scrutinized for cynicism, every statement scrutinized for a shading of the truth.

Just last week, Undersecretary of State John Bolton pulled out of congressional testimony over Syria that seemed likely to result in more exaggerations and then more backtracking. This week, the president has come under fire for pledging his support during the State of the Union to AmeriCorps and then remaining quiet as House Republicans took their knives to it. Bush would have cruised through the AmeriCorps contradiction with a slight stutter-step a few months ago. But with questions of the president's integrity on the front pages, he's going to have to answer for his earlier claims.

Next page: What can Bush do?