Tap-Dancing Around the ‘L-Word’

Hours before John Edwards took the stage Wednesday, MSNBC’s Tim Russert informed viewers that the vice presidential nominee would not be using the words “Bush” or “Cheney” in his speech.

But there’s another word that’s been loitering around the convention coverage -- “liar.” It has to do with President Bush and Iraq and the overheated rhetoric encouraged by TV news.

Three days into a convention that is split between what is described as antiwar fervor in the hall and a mandate to radiate party warmth and unity on TV, the semantic dance continues. The speakers stop short of saying the Bush administration lied, while TV commentators poke around for clarification and conservatives push harder.

“On June 17, you said Bush lied,” Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said to Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe on Wednesday.

“I don’t think I said ‘lied,’ ” McAuliffe retorted. “I have always said George Bush has continually misled us.” He later used the words “embellished” and “politicized.”

Earlier in the day, the Rev. Jesse Jackson called the war a “moral disgrace,” based on “words of mass deception.” The Rev. Al Sharpton put it this way: “If I told you tonight, ‘Let’s leave the FleetCenter, we’re in danger,’ and when you get outside, you ask me, ‘Reverend Al, What is the danger?’ And I say, ‘It don’t matter. We just needed some fresh air.’ I have misled you and we were misled.”

A day earlier it was O’Reilly going up against “Fahrenheit 9/11’s” Michael Moore on “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Moore: “Oh, he lied to the nation, Bill. I can’t think of a worse thing to do for a president to lie to a country to take them to war. I mean, I don’t know a worse ... “

O’Reilly: “It wasn’t a lie.”

Moore: “He did not tell the truth, what do you call that?”

O’Reilly: “I call that bad information, acting on bad information; not a lie.”

On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on Wednesday, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said of Bush: “It’s not OK to misspeak and not tell the truth when you’re sending troops into a foreign country.” Onstage a night earlier, Dean spoke of the need for a “foreign policy that relies on telling the truth to the American people before we send our brave American soldiers to fight in foreign lands.”

That line prompted this retort from former Sen. Bob Dole on CNN’s “Larry King Live”: “He called Bush in effect a liar.”