Wag the Dog?

Posted on May 12, 2006

From thezreview.co.uk

Did President Bush decide to address the nation on immigration as a way of distracting attention from his administration’s NSA phone record collection program? Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman starred in “Wag the Dog,” a movie about an attention-shifting ploy by a troubled White House.

President Bush will deliver a rare (for him) television address, a Monday night talk on immigration reform.

Is it too cynical to ask whether he’s wagging the dog to distract attention from the NSA phone record issue? Is it possible to be too cynical about Bush’s motives?

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N.Y. Times:

WASHINGTON, May 12 ? President Bush will use a television address on Monday night to offer new proposals to spur passage of legislation that could put millions of illegal immigrants on the path to American citizenship, the White House said today.

Mr. Bush will speak from the Oval Office beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time and is expected to propose new enforcement measures along the United States’ border with Mexico, including the use of additional troops. The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said the president would speak for about 20 minutes, and that television networks had been asked to carry the speech live.

“This is crunch time,” Mr. Snow told reporters this morning.

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