From the dawn of their species, White House press secretaries have sought to cast their boss in a positive light. Perhaps not since Ron Zeigler made inoperative statements on behalf of Richard Nixon, however, has a press secretary exhibited such a brazen and cavalier disregard for the facts. Before President Bush rode a Navy jet onto the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, press secretary Ari Fleischer informed the world, inaccurately, that the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore. That distance over water, Fleischer suggested, would be too long for the president to safely make the hop...