“It is what it is” is an expression familiar to many communicators: Faced with the awkward truth, sometimes there is no point in spinning the facts; instead, the best coarse is to embrace the truth and move on.

That’s what the White House appears to be doing with the President’s failure to settle on an Afghanistan strategy. In a piece by the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny today, White House officials argue that the President’s delay is, in fact, a good thing:

President Obama has not made a decision about his new military strategy for Afghanistan. And the White House is happy to say so. …
The White House has been eager to show that Mr. Obama is engaged in extensive deliberations before making what is likely to be one of the most debated decisions of his presidency. …
In purely political terms, the relatively slow pace — administration officials had initially suggested that the review would be complete by early November — signals to both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill that he has given serious consideration to all the options.

One could argue that the slow pace also signals to both Democrats and Republicans (and critical independents) that the war in Afghanistan is not a top priority for the President. How else to explain the President spending more time on political campaigning and health care lobbying than war planning in recent weeks?

Similarly, as I pointed out on MSNBC yesterday, the longer the President waits, the more the internal debate will spill into the public as advisers try to pressure the outcome of the President’s deliberations. Just this week, the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s opposition to sending more troops was made public. Assuming the President does opt to send more troops into war, the Ambassador’s dissent will surely fuel opposition in Congress, the public, and overseas to the surge, undermining the likelihood of success.

Zeleny also reports that the President’s advisers are taking the extra time to plan how to sell the new strategy – whatever it may be – to the American people and Congress. As I’ve argued for months, getting buy-in from Congress and the American people is critical. According to Zeleny, the White House is leaning towards a primetime Oval Office address, which seems appropriate. If that’s the route the President goes, Peggy Noonan offers some good advice on how to deliver the news:

The president needs to tell the public what his plan is, how he came to it, how it will work, why it will work, why we should back it, and why the world should view it with sympathy.

He will be talking to a nation full of people tested by a difficult and dramatic decade and anxious about their daily lives. But they will be willing to make a last great push if that push seems thought through, serious and credibly argued for with believable facts. Americans know their taxes at all levels of government are going to go up, as will future spending, as will the national debt. It is one thing to make a war decision in a time of plenty, with the optimism and daring such a time brings. It is another to make a war decision in a time of constriction, and the anxiety that brings.