Propaganda Series Followup: Lies?

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Abraham Lincoln.

If this is true, why would the Bush administration put out a record number of lies in support of their agenda?

Sorry, don't have time to get into the debate as to whether or not Bush lied - Google bush lies you will get 13,200,000 hits.

I guess somebody in the Bush administration decided that it might just be possible to fool 51% of the people all of the time. And they really didn't need any more than that. Obviously, I am going with the conclusion that the Republicans under Bush lied, they lied big and they lied often. So the only question in my mind is "How did they get away with it?" Because usually lies backfire.

I do have a theory. Bush came in to power following a president who lied once. Clinton told a lie, under oath, about having sex with Monica Lewinsky, and it almost aborted his presidency. You would think that in the next presidency, the only thing that would be sacred would be telling the truth.

But the very nature of Karl Rove was to go at things head on - never to be cornered. He knew that given George Bush's personality that telling the truth would be impossible for more than a week. So in a clever tactical move, Karl Rove set about, using spin and/or propaganda, to develop an environment where lying was acceptable to the public. We can start first with the presumption that each side is forever accusing the other of lying, it is not a bad smokescreen for a compulsive liar.

Here are the key elements to soften up the public (if you just need to lie, you can't help yourself)
1. Start lying early, about inconsequential things, get people used to it.
2. Lie about things that are called national security secrets, to give it an air of how you're just deceiving the enemy. The British did that in WW II when they said they were going to invade at Calais, and actually went to Normandy. The British people understood the need to lie in their national defence.
3. Make really obvious lies, so obvious they are almost funny, everybody knows you're lying but it's a joke.
4. Pretend to be so dumb you wouldn't know the difference between truth and falsehood just out of ignorance.
5. Make out that people who can detect the lies are intellectual liberal elites and therefore out of touch. (and possibly traitors)
6. "The Big Lie" theory, why not use it and see how it works?
7. Call it all spin, sounds better than propaganda.
8. Make sure you get control of at least some media, say Fox News, Talk Radio, Washington Times, New York Post.
9. Never lie under oath. i.e. Never take an oath except the oath of office.

If you set the situation up properly, you can avoid the negative backlash of the lies when they are found out. But still benefit from the support you first get based on the lies themselves. And if you keep up the endless barrage of new lies, your opponents will not be able to keep up.

Bush came to office with the expectation that he would NEVER tell a lie. Not after what happened to Bill Clinton. Instead Bush became arguably the biggest liar that the Presidency has ever known. He lied early and he lied often. He lied when needed and when not needed. He almost never spoke without lying. And somehow he made it work, analysts will be pulling this one apart for decades to see how it ticked.