Managing the Message: The President's Address on the New Course in Iraq

President Bush's address to the nation is already being picked apart by nearly everyone, and while I don't think there's much I can add, I thought there were a couple of interesting things about which I haven't heard much discussion of as of yet.

First, I'm not really sure exactly why everyone is so keyed on hearing an apology from the President regarding his handling of the war thus far. I guess it's rooted in the notion that it's difficult to except that he has really evaluated our strategy in Iraq from the ground up unless we hear some concrete acknowledgement that what we have done thus far has encompassed some strategic and tactical missteps. As profoundly as I have disagreed with both the underlying precepts which frame the Iraq conflict and many of the decisions which have been made in furtherance of those precepts, I'm not really sure I expect the President to take a self critical tone on national television every time I disagree with him.

That being said, this is about Managing the Message, an with that in mind, I think the President did an excellent job of providing that apology without apologizing at all. Frankly, I think this particular bit of message management is more important to the President personally than to the public or the media, because he's proven himself almost pathologically incapable of admitting mistakes. This is the passage that most of the press reports I've seen have chosen to designate as the apology:

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

Now if anyone else had uttered this, I'm not sure I'd be writing about it. And while I'm not sure how useful a pop psychology analysis of the President is, it strikes me that this is not an apology at all. All President Bush said is that mistakes have been made and if they were made, he is responsible because he's the guy at the top. It gives him plenty of room to come back to the people (and to himself) and say that he might be worthy of the blame but that it wasn't his fault, only his responsibility.

If you give your teenager the keys to the car, and he goes out, gets drunk, and wraps the car around a tree, you might not be to blame, but in many ways, you're certainly responsible. What's more, beyond that distinction, I think it's truly a stretch to characterize this passage as an apology. I think Bush thinks the blame may rest elsewhere (the Iraqi people, the insurgents, the Iranians, the lack of resolve on the part of the American people, al-Maliki), and that his strategy would have worked but for these factors, but nevertheless, because he is the Commander in Chief, he holds the responsibility. I'm not sure that Managing the Message in this instance matters all that much to anyone but Bush himself.

My other point is just a nit-pick. Normally Bush ends his speeches with "and may God bless the United States of America." While I could write all day about how I think this is inappropriate, that is well trodden ground. What's interesting is that this time, he closed by saying "We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying times. Thank you and good night." I'm not sure why he went for the veiled reference to God this time around, but I do think it's another interesting example in an enduring pattern of this Administration using language which is specifically rooted in the Scriptures and which many non-Christian American might not instantly recognize or take offense towards.