Bush's New Tack Steers Clear of 'Stay the Course'

Bush's New Tack Steers Clear of 'Stay the Course'

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 24, 2006; A01



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102301053.html?referrer=email

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.
"We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed," he said in Salt Lake City in August.

But the White House is cutting and running from "stay the course." A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say. Democrats have now turned "stay the course" into an attack line in campaign commercials, and the Bush team is busy explaining that "stay the course" does not actually mean stay the course.

Instead, they have been emphasizing in recent weeks how adaptable the president's Iraq policy actually is. Bush remains steadfast about remaining in Iraq, they say, but constantly shifts tactics and methods in response to an adjusting enemy. "What you have is not 'stay the course' but in fact a study in constant motion by the administration," Snow said yesterday.

Political rhetoric, of course, is often in constant motion as well. But with midterm elections two weeks away, the Bush team is searching for a formula to address public opposition to the war, struggling to appear consistent and flexible at the same time. That was underscored by the reaction to a New York Times report that the administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to disarm militias and assume a larger security role. The White House initially called the story "inaccurate." But then White House counselor Dan Bartlett went on CNN yesterday morning to call it "a little bit overwritten" because in fact it was something the administration had been doing for months.

how ironic.

What do they do? Throw it downfield and hope they score. I love the smell of desperation in the morning. :D

Nor will he until forced.

And the straight face they all keep when they explain that they never said "stay the course" but if they did it didn't mean what we thought it meant.

...who want to bring our troops home aren't "Defeat-o-crats" after all?
:sarcasm:

:rofl:


Ever get the feeling we have a bunch of super-sized, super-annuated CHILDREN running the country?
:banghead:

The opposite is to "leave the course", i.e., "not stay in the race till the finish line" ("stay" is the same as in "stay (for) the concert", the lack of the preposition being a bit archaic.)

One can change tactics--jockey's do it during a race. The goal is the same, regardless of tactic, to win. (Which ignores the question of defining winning in Iraq, of course.)

But "stay" also used to mean "fix, make fast". "Stays" are still clasps or something on some undergarments. It strikes me as odd that people have reached back for a now archaic meaning of the word; perhaps the archaism in omitting the preposition is the problem. This new definition, popularized by wordsmiths without access to dictionaries or sensitivity to meaning, makes "stay the course" mean "not change what we're doing". Sounds more like a naval term (but it isn't). Even this article skirts the crucial distsinguishing features of the two definitions, reducing both to ambiguously meaning "steely resolve" ... but one can be resolved in various ways, all of them steely.

Snow badly botched the explanation in what NPR aired ... was it today? Then again, he's a wordsmith of sorts. Just about all of them have been equally inept with this locution.

I imagine 'fast' was equally confusing, and only cautiously used, as it changed from usually meaning "solidly fixed in place" to usually meaning "rapidly". But one could still say 'fast' doesn't actually mean fast.