President Bush and his aides are annoyed that people keep misinterpreting his Iraq policy as "stay the course." A complete distortion, they say. "That is not a stay-the-course policy," White House press secretary Tony Snow declared yesterday.
Where would anyone have gotten that idea? Well, maybe from Bush.
...followed by three examples of Bush saying that he's staying the course, a clarifying tact usually reserved for The Daily Show. Then they twist the knife further with:
But the White House is cutting and running from "stay the course."
This is an abject lesson in the hazards of bumper-sticker policy and governance. Now that he painted all criticism of his policies and suggestions for reassessment as "cutting and running", he's stuck with either "staying the course" or with trying to explain why he is "flip-flopping". His rhetoric has boomeranged on him.