Fool me once

During the campaign, I blogged repeatedly about the Obama lie pattern, which is to begin with an outright denial and then, when confronted with incontrovertible fact, to start leaking out teeny concessions.  This approach always reminds me of the way in which doctors used to (and maybe still do) break the news about cancer:  (1) We found something, but we’re sure it’s nothing; (2) well, it might be something, but we’re sure it’s curable; (3) sorry, it’s not curable, but we can control it for years; (4) you’ve got a week to live.  (We went through this silly trajectory of information with my father, so I know it personally.)  The theory is that the patient is better able to deal with bad news in increments rather than having to cope with a bluntly stated death sentence.

Unsurprisingly given his history, with the Blagojovich scandal Obama is engaging in precisely the same pattern.  First came total denial (“Never saw the man in my life.”)  This was soon followed by a small concession (“I think I shook hands with him at a party once.”)  And then we got the continuous trickle of increasingly ugly (and provable) truths — “Well, we did talk, but only about non-substantive stuff;” “We talked about substantive stuff, but nothing to do with the senate seat;” “My aides might have talked to him about the senate seat, but I knew nothing;” “I knew about the senate seat talks, but only in the purest sense.”  By the time Obama, in some convoluted and obscure speech to a special interest about which no one cares, concedes that he was buried up to his neck in Blago mire, the press (and probably everyone else) will have tuned him out entirely.

This approach has worked exceptionally well for Obama, not just because it’s such an attenuated approach to information that it bores an MTV generation hooked on instant soundbites, but also because it’s allowed the members of the press to find excuses for him every time.  If Obama were to stick to an outright lie in the face of culminating evidence, they couldn’t excuse him.  Likewise, if he were to spill the ugly truth instantly, they couldn’t excuse him.  But with this incremental approach, the media, like the cancer victim coming to terms with the increasingly depressing truth, is able to put up continuous defenses to each new piece of information, defenses they happily pass along to the news consuming public.