President Bush will probably not go down in history as a passive president. For better or worse, mostly worse, the President has greatly expanded the role of the Executive branch and has made the "Imperial Presidency" even more active. But if there's one area where the President is passive: his grammar.
In my legal rhetoric class, we learn how to use grammar as a persuasive tool. Active voice to emphasize, passive voice to deemphasize. Little did I know that I could look to our President and his cabinet for examples in this rhetoric technique:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday: Mistakes were made here.
President Bush today: Mistakes were made. And I'm frankly not happy about them.
Apparently the controversy over at the Justice Department regarding the US Attorney firings was not the first time this very language was used. Newsweek actually wrote an article about a month ago about how Bush stole this phrase from President Ronald Reagan. Speaking about the biggest disaster in his presidency (my opinion, not his), Bush said: Mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion.
Obviously this doesn't deflect all that much blame, people are still calling for Gonzales' resignation and people still hate Bush, but saying "mistakes were made" still does sound better than "I made mistakes." Isn't grammar fun?
1 comment:
Reagan beat them to the punch with the "Mistakes were made," statement, though.
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