…certainly not George Bush. The New York Times reported today that Bush thinks those who support the recent ruling that the Federal wiretapping program is unconstitutional are ‘naive.’ According to him, they ’simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.’

Oh, the irony. I cannot believe that no one told Bush what an idiotic statement he was making. What *is* the nature of the world in which we live, Mr. President? Let’s extropolate a few simple axioms from recent statements:

• The fight against terrorism - whatever it is - is more important than your privacy.
• I am not interested in trying to fight terrorism and at the same time working to safeguard your privacy.
• This new world is so incredibly new - newer than the many new worlds that came before it - that it’s finally okay to disregard the standards set by the Framers and upheld since then.
• I can tell people what to believe.

You’ll note that only the first three are political. Debatable, maybe, though I think the two sides of that one are very far apart, and in both cases hiding their real priorities. It’s the last one, though, that I just can’t believe. How could it be that there is no anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, or marketer in the White House to tell Bush that you cannot get anywhere telling huge swaths of Americans that they are wrong and naive for believing something? This is not a political issue. The Bush administration appears to be so dogmatic, so without nuance, that they can’t even recognize a public relations problem when it smacks them in the face!

They have so far had modest success making every last iota of politics about terrorism - but I think the veil is lifting, and the issues with true staying power are coming through. Terrorism will never be gone. But the public relations stunt that is *TERROR* will be gone soon. Privacy will be an increasingly important issue for the foreseeable future. No president will get by saying that Americans should subsume their beliefs about privacy to a national political agenda. It doesn’t work that way. And I can’t believe no one told Bush that.