Candor is so little prized in Washington that you want to shake the hand
of anyone who dares commit it. So cheers to Andrew
Card, the
president's chief of staff, for telling The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller
the real reason that his boss withheld his full-frontal move on Saddam
Hussein until September: "From a marketing point of view, you don't
introduce new products in August."
Mr. Card has taken some heat for talking about a war in which many may
die as if it were the rollout of a new S.U.V. But he wasn't lying, and
history has already proved him right. This campaign has been so well
timed and executed that the new product already owns the market. The
unofficial motto of the 9/11 anniversary may have been "Never forget,"
but by 9/12, if not before, the war on Al Qaeda was already fading from
memory as the world was invited to test-drive the war on Iraq.
-- Frank Rich
"Never Forget What?" New York Times Sept. 14, 2002.