“After first describing the attack as a spontaneous demonstration run amok, administration officials now describe it as a terrorist act with possible involvement by Al Qaeda. The changing accounts prompted the spokesman for the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., to issue a statement on Friday acknowledging that American intelligence agencies “revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.””
When Obama was first elected, I said that lying to the public is a part of his or any president’s job. Some people got upset, but the fact is that a modern President resembles nothing so much as the child in the back seat of a car with a make believe steering wheel. Our foreign policy is driven by the needs of an empire few us us will admit even exists. Our economy is driven by the whims of principalities and powers known as corporations. So a modern president’s major task is identifying currents of popular opinion, running to the head of them, and calling it a parade.
But, to answer the question, Obama should not be hurt much by the public realizing our original narrative of hysterical Muslims protesting a movie was wrong. In fact, I’ll bet that, ten years from now, it will still be the popular memory of what happened.