How do you smear a President?

Simple, make up a few “experts” out of thin air, attribute all sorts of slanderous quotes to them, and let the press and blog corps do the rest. 1984 is here and gone… but George Orwell’s vision is not (just) the tool of the government.

It’s downright frightening to see the broad-range of attacks and slanderous quotes that have been thrown around by those opposed to the President for years… and then to discover they’re attributed to people who never existed.

Who’s George Harleigh?

“The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush.”

Agree or disagree, it’s a very famous quote from an obviously famous man, one George Harleigh.

He’s so famous I feel like a complete idiot going to my readers for help like this, and I’m sure I’ll feel even more idiotic when someone finally provides me with the details I cannot find anywhere. (I want to know where he taught, and in what capacities he worked for Nixon and Reagan.)

“George Harleigh” is quoted in innumerable web sites, and he’s a retired Political Science professor who worked in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations. I feel like a total idiot, because I’m unable to find out anything about him. His name doesn’t appear in the indexes of any of my books on Nixon or Reagan, I can’t find a Wikipedia entry on him, and I can’t even ascertain the university where he taught.

And George isn’t the only one… click through to read more.

Classical Values :: Where’s George? And where’s Doug?