Misjudgment in high places can be accepted as a constant; so can the habits of mind that favor criminal incompetence and the pretensions to imperial splendor. I don't find it surprising that when the United States was attacked by Saudi Arabian jihadists we responded by attacking a secular regime in Iraq. Germany in 1914 declared war on Russia and invaded France. All governments enchanted by the story of their own magnificence fall afoul of the same stupidities--the waste of money, the misreading of foreign intelligence reports, the breakdown of interior lines of communication, the inability to see further than three feet into the future. The variable is the character and quality of the excuses.

Ronald Reagan was president (a man who was himself hard-pressed to know what was true and what was not), and it was no longer necessary to work up a plausible alibi. It was enough to lower one's voice to an agreeable murmur and say, with a gracious and accomodating smile, "I can't recall."

The technique is as easy to learn as the vocabulary of corporate advertising and, with the proviso that one must keep a straight face, a form of address that lends itself to the earnest recitation of heartfelt nonsense.