Infectious Alzheimer's ?

Kevin Drum quotes Joseph M Price MD who diagnoses the Presidents problem with language as Alzheimer's.

Matthew Yglesias quotes Julian Sanchez (reluctantly) defending Cheney

My friend Julian Sanchez says Dick Cheney's being misquoted. Everyone's running with this:

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.

When what Cheney said was this:

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

Unlike me Yglesias is smart enough to guess that Cheney meant to say something completely different

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that [if we were] hit again, [if we were] hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, ... that we [Would] fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

Yglesias notes that this argument is completely dishonest. Indeed it asserts that Democrats use the standard law enforcement strategy of attacking countries with which we are at peace with cruise missiles, while Republicans use the all out war approach of debating for months whether al Qaeda must be addressed as just one of many important issues concerning the US and Pakistan and then going on vacation for a month (I admit that this summer I fought two pre911 Republican style total wars except for the bit about Pakistan).

Now I interpreted Cheney's complete statement as being equivalent to

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, [ I mean] that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and [furthermore] that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

I thought that, because my additions do not change the meaning of the statement at all, while Yglesias' interpretation changes an indicative to the hypothesis of a conditional, changing Cheney's explicit warning that a vote for Kerry is a vote for terror to a discussion of how Cheney claims Kerry would react to terrorism.

I think Yglesias and Sanchez are right about what Cheney meant to say. I suspect that this sort slip occured because Cheney was deliberately dancing on the edge of the cliff of the outrageous attempting to almost but not quite say something outrageous to subliminabally plant a seed. Be that as it may, Cheney clearly mispoke changing a hypothetical to an assertion.

Maybe excessive closeness to Bush has destroyed Cheney's grasp of English grammer.

My guess is that neither has Alzheimers. By the way, if Bush had Alzheimer's it would be the classic Alzheimer's syndrome as described by Alzheimer who noted precocious senile dementia, only later when similar brain lesions were observed was the word applied to senile dementia Alzheimer's type later shortened to Alzheimers.

I think Bush is having more trouble speaking because he is lying even more than he used. It is harder to phrase a credible lie than to state the truth (that's why I like to say "honest men need no commas"). Furthermore he has to navigate his way around many inconvenient facts and, I'd guess that leaves no spare brain power for remembering long words. It's not like he ever had much to spare.

My guess is that Cheney was avoiding the subjunctive like the plague talking down to voters. The problem is that fancy grammer is sometimes needed in order to say what one means with few words. I think he could have said what he meant using only the indicative as follows.

There is a terrible risk that we will get hit again, and that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States. If you make the wrong choice on November 2nd, there is a danger that we will then fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that was a terrible mistake for us.

but it is easier to do sitting at home in front of a keyboard. Also this is clear but to be the Queen's English it would have to be "If you were to make the wrong mistake on November 2nd, there would be ...". This reminds us that the Queen has never won an election.

Update: After posting this, I find that Sanchez' quotation is the second version of the transcript put up at www.whitehouse.gov Nick Confessore (Via Brad DeLong) points out that they had first posted

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

They then changed the first period to a comma. I recall a major major cold war debate about a comma in the Yalta treaty. I swear that I recalled that I like to say "honest men need no commas" before I learned about this particular comma.