presidential off-the-cuff remark, or bold lie?
today’s example of “it sounds good when he says it” comes to you from the state of the union address…
Administration backs off Bush’s vow to reduce Mideast oil imports [knight ridder, 2006.02.01]One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.
we can apparently either believe that the president was merely riffing on a theme, and the state of the union address was not a prepared speech… or we can believe that he said what he said while the public was paying attention, with the full intent and instruction to staff to “take it back” once the public went back to their lives.
then again, it seems not many people were really paying attention to the state of the union address this time around, so… maybe i’m just being cynical.
if a promise is made in the congress, and nobody hears it, is it a promise? not so much a promise… but a “goal”:
2006 state of the union [2006.01.31]Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.