All presidents keep secrets, and just about all of them lie as well. This is unfortunate, but not a source of scandal...Yet during the Bush era, America entered a period I call “the Post-Truth Presidency” during which it mattered little to almost anyone whether the president and his representatives accurately represented reality in their statements to the press and the public. What mattered was what they thought it reasonable to try and get away with. They used their newly discovered power of audacity to rewrite the rules of political discourse and badly weaken the foundation of our democratic discourse. The attack was waged on numerous fronts simultaneously; indeed that was part of its genius. Even the most conscientious media watchdog had a hard time keeping up.

Eric Alterman and George Zornick do try to list some of the offensives the Bush administration launched against press inquiry and FOIA requests, from the amply-scorned Cheney file cabinet to Susan B. Long's legal battles with the IRS. It's much more troubling than George W. Bush's silver spoon-addled oratory.

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