George W. Bush, President of the United States

The New York Times has thoughtfully transcribed the contents of tonight's third and final presidential debate. You can read it by clicking here.

Here's their transcription of the exchange between moderator Bob Schieffer and President George W. Bush relating to the current shortage of flu vaccine:

"Mr. Schieffer New question, Mr. President, to you. We're talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us, flu kills thousands of people every year, suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?

"Mr. Bush Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizens and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country.

"We're working with Canada to - hopefully they'll produce a - help us realize the vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.

"My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year. Help us prioritize those who need to get the flu shot, the elderly and the young.

"The C.D.C., responsible for health in the United States, is setting those priorities and is allocating the flu vaccine accordingly. I haven't gotten a flu shot and I don't intend to because I want to make sure that those who are most vulnerable get treated.

"We have a problem with litigation in the United States of America. Vaccine manufacturers are worried about getting sued and so therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine. One of the reasons I'm such a strong believer in legal reform is so that people aren't afraid of producing a product that is necessary for the health of our citizens and then end up getting sued in a court of law.

"But the best thing we can do now, Bob, given the circumstances with the company in England is for those of us who are younger and healthy, don't get a flu shot."

The President starts out saying that "we relied upon a company out of England" and ends his response by blaming "the circumstances with the company in England." Chiron, the company whose slipshod methods led to the contamination of its Fluvirin® vaccine with serratia and then to the revocation of the manufacturing license for its vaccine factory in Liverpool by the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) ("the British FDA"), is a U.S. company headquartered in Emeryville, California, which had outsourced its Fluvirin manufacture to the U.K.

The President went on to say that "it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated." Some of it was contaminated, and during the summer Chiron assured everyone that this was a limited problem that was being resolved. Although the details are not yet available, Chiron lost its license because the MHRA concluded that the entire structure of the Liverpool plant and Chiron's operations there was such that the safety of vaccine manufactured there could not be assured. It wasn't the case that all 54 million doses of vaccine produced there were, or are, "contaminated," as the President said.

The President said: "And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country."

Credit for blocking the shipment of the potentially-contaminated Fluvirin into the U.S. belongs to the British agency, the MHRA, which revoked the manufacturing license of Chiron for their Liverpool plant.

The role of the "American MHRA," the Food and Drug Administration, in this case is, at this time, extremely murky, with charges and denials ricocheting back and forth. But to imply, as the President does, that it was a courageous and vigilant FDA that has protected the American citizenry from possible danger is something not supported by the facts.

The President mentions that "We're working with Canada to - hopefully they'll produce a - help us realize the vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season."

This is rich, coming from the man who had previously stood foursquare and stalwart against the threat of allowing much-lower-priced Canadian pharmaceutical products to be imported into the U.S., against the wishes of the powerful drug companies who have contributed so much to his efforts to get himself elected to a position where he can pay them back by blocking attempts by American patients to buy their drugs from a country with a health policy designed to benefit citizens rather than to maximize the return-on-investment of drug corporations.

Within the mess that Chiron has created, it is admirable that the President has issued a call to the healthy to leave the remaining vaccine to those who need it most. His statement that "I haven't gotten a flu shot and I don't intend to because I want to make sure that those who are most vulnerable get treated" is stirring, if obvious.

It is oddly reminiscent of former President Gerald R. Ford's public demonstration of support for GETTING a swine flu shot during another presidential election year, 1976. At that time, the Federal Government, on orders from President Ford, embarked on a program to inoculate every American against what was painted as a severe threat, but only after the vaccine makers had extracted a binding legal promise from it to excuse them from any liability stemming from the medicines they were paid millions to produce.

In the event, no one except the first victim ever caught swine flu, although many contracted the paralyzing Guillian-Barre syndrome from the vaccine itself and the Federal Government ended up paying $5 billion in settlements to the victims of the vaccine, while the drug manufacturers got to keep the money they were paid to make it, free and clear.

Finally, on the subject of severe threats that never materialized: The errors in fact and the implicit hypocrisy in what President Bush said tonight should be considered in the context of the totality of his approach to facts.

The President led the U.S. and its "coalition partners" into war in Iraq on the basis that he was defending the lives of its people from the imminent threat of the nuclear incineration then being plotted against them by Saddam Hussein and al-Quedah. Just as with his errors regarding Fluvirin, none of what he said was true. Saddam and al-Quedah were NOT working together, hadn't worked together. Saddam DID NOT have nuclear weapons nor the ability to make any.

President Bush now justifies the invasion of Iraq, which has practically and psychologically done as much damage to American interests as any enemy terrorist could possible hope for, on the tenuous grounds that Saddam had the "intent" of acquiring nuclear weapons and, presumably, giving them to terrorists groups he hated and feared in the certain knowledge that if he did so he could expect to find himself at ground zero under an American-made mushroom cloud that would dwarf the explosion that collapsed the Twin Towers.

The whole concept is so preposterous, so dishonest, and so obviously ridiculous that one wonders why George W. Bush hasn't been laughed off the stage of world history before he does any more damage.

So when the President mangles the facts about flu vaccine, and takes credit for things he shouldn't, and tries to put the blame where it doesn't belong, these behaviors should be seen as part of a continuum and as a reflection of a fundamentally ignorant, arrogant, careless, condescending, and, ultimately, transparent attempt to fool as many of the people as much of the time as he possibly can.

And when the President forgets how he lied about the safety of Canadian drugs to protect his campaign contributors' profits at the expense of people with less money than he has, personally, in order to offer flu vaccine from the very same source as even a partial solution to endemic health problems he has done nothing to solve and much to exacerbate (for example, making it illegal for Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies to lower prices to consumers), it's even more obvious that the time has come to reject a political style that strives to create an almost totally false set of perceptions about a reality that can only be coped with and ameliorated by looking at it squarely and honestly, and then working to improve it.

A long and escalating practice of deliberate or inadvertent misrepresentations of facts by an ambitious politician as a technique to acquire and expand power for himself and his cronies is what led Germany in the 1930s, Chile in the 1970s, and, interestingly enough, Iraq in the 1980s, and many others, to national disaster. We need to learn from these examples, and refuse to go along with the lies offered as "facts" or justifications for action by dishonest and manipulative "leaders."

The President's failure to get the facts about flu vaccine right tonight is only a small thing, but it is still a flashing sign-post illuminating the path down which he is promising to lead us. We all need to say, a la Bartleby, "We'd prefer not to."