Bush Goes Back to Black and White

Sunday's speech showed glimmers of frankness, then reverted to caricature.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Dec. 19, 2005, at 5:11 PM ET

President George W. Bush came close to delivering a frank and forthright speech on Iraq Sunday night, but in the crunch, he reverted to form and the by-now-predictable mix of fact, distortion, and fantasy.

His tack these days—developed over the course of four earlier speeches carried by daytime cable and polished to a shine for his prime-time network address—is to admit past mistakes yet project absolute confidence in the course ahead; to acknowledge dissenting views yet denounce them as "defeatist"; to trumpet total victory as the only alternative to defeat yet fail to define the term in any realistic fashion.