The Failed Case for Bush Embarrassment

The LA Times is refusing to let yesterday's stiry about the missile defense system test failure die. I wrote earlier on the original LAT story (here) and today, they've dredged it up again (here), framing the test failure a huge embarrassment to the Bush Administration, which had promised having a system operational in 2004.

To drum up the embarrassment angle, the LAT includes three Administration quotes, including one from the President, promising that the system would be operational this year. As it turns out, a minor glitch has delayed the test until January. Is anyone in the administration genuinely embarrassed by this?

The LAT continuously refers to the failed test as a "$85 million test," to make matters appear worse. They're wrong, and they should know it. The $85 million included the cost of the interceptor rocket, that is still on the launch pad and will be used again when the glitch is repaired.

Out of curiousity, I did a Nexis search of the number of times in the last month "Bush Administration" appeared within 10 words of either "embarrassed" or "embarrassment." Some of the other things the Bush Administration is apparently embarrassed about are:

• Rumsfeld's comments in Kuwait
• The overturned conviction of two suspected terrorists from Morocco
• Bernard Kerik's botched nomination
• The war in Iraq
• The resignation of "American Hawk" Richard Perle from the board of UK software company Autonomy
• Hugo Chavez' reign in Venezuelen

All in all, I'd say things are going along in largely unembarrassed mode for the Administration. Nexis turned up no blue dresses, no questionable pardons, no Cabinet members resigning in disgrace.

The search also turned up this nice reference from the editorial pages of the Omaha World Herald: An unhappy liberal, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times (who never seems to be happy over anything unless it involves embarrassment of a Republican), accused the "Bushies" of "puritanism and religious fanaticism."