Over zealous weenies...

I'm getting a little bit annoyed by the extreme significance being placed on George Bush's words regarding the current Karl Rove/Valerie Plame issue.

Yes, in answer to a question, he did make a somewhat watered down version of earlier statements, that if someone had broken the law they would no longer work in his White House.

SO WHAT?

What will count is deeds, not words. I'm as inclined to believe as the next guy that the rhetoric in 2000 about returning honor to the White House was merely election year empty promises and not likely to change things.

But in this case, it was not George W. Bush coming out and saying "I want to issue this press release to clarify my position." It was an answer to a question during a Q&A period.

I'm not going to say I don't think the whole situation smells really bad, and I'm not going to say that I don't think that likely Rove will skate by on a technicality with the full support of the President.

But c'mon, this kind of word parsing to assign extreme meaning to exactly what was said is exactly what Rove's opponents hate about him (and that Republicans hated about Clinton as well). "I did not NAME Ms. Plame" (literally true, he never used her name). "What is the definition of the word 'is'?".

If a politician doesn't live up to what he promised, hold his feet to the fire. If he changes what he promised, make sure you remember both promises, so that you can point out the original promise when the politician points to the new one and claims to have lived up to his promise.

But if I promise you that I'll eat 8 grapes, and later say "I promise I'll eat at least 6 grapes", that doesn't mean I won't eat 8. 8 would fall under the definition of "at least 6", and I've not broken my word. The time to call me on it is if I eat 7 grapes and say "See? I lived up to my promise", at which point you have every right to say "Um, yeah, you lived up to your second promise, but your original promise was 8, you didn't do that."

Liam.