WE'VE BEEN UNFAIR IN SAYING THE UR HAS NO FRIENDS...:

The Words Have Changed, but Have the Policies? (PETER BAKER, 4/02/09, NY Times)

Mr. Obama and his team are busily scrubbing President George W. Bush’s national security lexicon, if not necessarily all of his policies.

They may be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, much as Mr. Bush did to Iraq, but it is not a “surge.” They may still be holding people captured on the battlefield at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but they are no longer “enemy combatants.” They may be carrying the fight to Al Qaeda as their predecessors did, but they are no longer waging a “war on terror.”

So if not a war on terror, what then? “Overseas contingency operations.”

And terrorist attacks themselves? “Man-caused disasters.”

Every White House picks its words carefully, using poll-tested, focus-grouped language to frame issues and ideas to advance its goals. Mr. Bush’s team did that assertively. The initial legislation expanding government power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the “U.S.A. Patriot Act.” The warrantless eavesdropping that became so controversial was rebranded the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” The enemy was, for a time, dubbed “Islamofascism,” until that was deemed insensitive to Muslims.

Now Mr. Obama is coming into office determined to sweep all that rhetoric away, even if he is keeping much of the policy that underlies it.

...he and Mr. Roget are inseparable.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 2, 2009 11:34 AM