I've been telling people for years that you can't trust the Center for American Progress. The latest evidence is a post on their Think Progress blog with the misleading headline "White House Asked Howard To Stay In Blair House To Give ‘Some Plausible Reason’ For Refusing Obama," which has been widely covered in the blogosphere today.
The problem is that the headline is based on speculation which is blown up and put in quotes as if it were known to be true. The Think Progress post is based on the following statement by Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann":
I reported…on December 11 and 12 that there were no foreign dignitaries booked into Blair House during that period of time... I have the feeling they asked him [Howard] to come and stay so that there might be some plausible reason for not letting the Obamas stay there.
Note the key phrase "I have the feeling," which is Washington-speak for "I am making something up that will help create a dramatic character-based narrative." Neither CAP nor Carlson knows what actually happened.
Unfortunately, they have spread the narrative around the blogosphere. For instance, the normally careful Matthew Yglesias, who works for CAP, paraphrases the post by writing "the Bush administration asked former Australian Prime Minister John Howard to stay at the place in order to give them a pretext to turn the Obamas down." (TNR's Jonathan Chait is more cautious, writing that he would "like to hear the White House's explanation before passing judgment.")
What difference does it make if the Australian leader was scheduled to stay at Blair House? Why should it matter if several receptions were to be held there? Who cares if it violated long-established protocol? Bush deserves to be blasted for turning down a request from the Son of God.
Posted by: David | January 08, 2009 at 01:32 PM