Lies About Blowjobs, Bad. Wars? Not So Much.

Eric Alterman has a great article at The Nation in which he elaborates on the "true dichotomy between the public and the elite media...on the subject of presidential lying".

Excluding George Washington and perhaps Jimmy Carter, just about all Presidents have found it necessary to lie to the American people. And with those two exceptions, and possibly a few others, many have also found it necessary--or at least desirable--to fool around with women other than their wives. For reasons of culture and history, the mainstream media decided that both of these longstanding traditions had to end with Bill Clinton.

When Bill Clinton lied about a few blowjobs, the Washington press corps treated his actions as a threat to the Republic.

However...

Clinton's approval rating hovered between the mid-sixties and the low seventies through the entire ordeal. Oddly, given the many obvious and quite consequential differences between a blowjob and a botched war effort, the Washington press corps appears to have reached a consensus that the former is a far more serious matter.

[...]

Chris Matthews proclaimed, "Everybody sort of likes the President, except for the real whack-jobs." Today the percentage of Americans who say they actually "like" Bush, according to a New York Times/CBS Poll, is 37 percent.

[...]

But the insider press corps cannot connect Bush's war lies to his unpopularity, because it has so much difficulty acknowledging either one. Nor have its members--so many of whom, not just Judy Miller, helped lay the groundwork for this Administration's criminal deception by parroting its lies and propaganda--seen fit to take responsibility for their role. Even today, Bush remains a far more respected and admired figure among insiders than Clinton, much less Al Gore, Ted Kennedy or any of our leaders who sought to save us from the Iraq catastrophe.

Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address was the most progressive of any President's in two decades, but it mattered little because, it turned out, he'd lied about his sex life. Eight years later Bush's State of the Union address will matter much more, because, after all, he only lies about everything.