Bush Is NOT A Statistician
The amazing statements of the Administration yesterday really deserve a bit more attention. I'll link to them again, because I think this issue will, if not survive till the election, at least come to be seen as a sort of shorthand for how empty this group really is.
So, remember: Anytime Bush quotes any number, of any kind, he is NOT a statistician. He's using numbers prepared by others, and as we now know, those numbers don't really merit our attention because, after all, it was the "numbers crunchers" who put them together, and they don't live in reality.
Frankly, I'm surprised it took them this long to make this leap. This Administration has long been oppressed by "numbers", and has shown nothing but contempt for them from the start.
It was "numbers" that said that Bush didn't actually win the election, until they found better numbers that said he did (namely, the electoral and Supreme Court majority numbers). It was "numbers" that said the planet was warming, while Bush was able to focus on "realty".
Jobs? Just "numbers". Budget deficits? Stockpiles of weapons? Dates of service? "Numbers", again. Dang those "numbers"!
But numbers represent something more than data points. In many cases, they represent a kind of truth. And Truth, as we all know, is something that a certain Administration has never dealt with very well. Thus, they can speak of "undeniable optimism" about the economy, where the "numbers" might suggest otherwise, at least for a large segment of the population. They can speak about the WMD, though the "numbers" suggest otherwise. They can talk about the tax cuts working. They can talk about No Child Left Behind, they can talk about job training.
Whatever they want their message to be, they can discuss it without any concern for the numbers. It goes hand-in-hand with a certain mentality, one that doesn't trust numbers, or the sneaky egghead types who dream them up.
Sooner or later, though, the numbers will matter. Like on November 2, 2004. And I get the feeling they won't like the looks of those numbers very much at all.
12:01:44 PM 
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