Exposed

by DemFromCT

A day later, the actions of Patrick Fitzgerald in laying out the case against Scooter Libby seem clear, compelling, and incomplete. Fitz took the kay Baily Hutchinsons of the word head on and explained why this is more than just a technicality. As David Brooks, Bush apologist, explained on the News Hour last evening, 

If anybody makes that argument after Fitzgerald's presentation at his press conference, the person is an idiot.

Fitzgerald, being a man of his word, is likley almost done. But the major import of all of this is not driving Bush out of office it's exposing two major and seamy truths. One, expressed in today's NY Times editorial is about this WH:

Supporters of Mr. Libby, known as Scooter, have attempted to describe the Wilson case as, at worse, a matter of casual gossip by Washington insiders about the wife of a man in the news. But the indictment does not describe a situation in which people accidentally outed someone they did not know was a covert officer. It describes a distinct and disturbing pattern of behavior among very high-ranking officials, including Mr. Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney, who knew that they were dealing with a covert officer and used their access to classified information in a public relations campaign over the rapidly disintegrating justifications for war with Iraq.

That's the task of the rest of the country to deal with... Fitzpatrick's done his job, and Congress, the theoretical oversight body, has not. The American people, in the ir collective wisdom, have generally preferred divided government and this recent stretch is only going to reinforce that proclivity. They just didn't fully realize that having Democrats of recent vintage control Congress was divided government in and of itself, which compared to the current situation, is looking nostalgically democratic (small d).

The other expose has to do with the syncophantic press. Expect whining like you never heard before about how much more difficult their job has become from those in the lazy DC crowd who prefer their stories pre-packaged by the spinmeisters. The interesting part of all of this is who spends their time complaining and who just goes back to work. Reporters, pundits, newspapers and the media have a chance yet again to separate themselves from the mediocre... let's see what they do with the opportunity.

And as the WaPo notes, this is the reality:

With yesterday's indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, President Bush's administration has become a textbook example of what can go wrong in a second term. Along with ineffectiveness, overreaching, intraparty rebellion, plunging public confidence and plain bad luck, scandal has now touched the highest levels of the White House staff.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were quick to condemn the president and his administration over the perjury and obstruction indictments of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But even some Republicans suggested that the president and his team will have taken away the wrong lesson if they conclude that, other than the personal tragedy of Libby's indictment, the long investigation changes nothing of significance.

As my mate Meteor Blades pointed out to me, Digby found the best quote in that story:

Noting that Clinton's approval ratings remained above 60 percent throughout the impeachment battle, while Bush's are in the low 40s, Podesta said, "When Clinton said, 'I'm going back to do my work,' people cheered," Podesta said. "When Bush says, 'I'm going to do the job I've been doing,' people say, 'Oh, no.' "

Bush was a disaster before Friday, and during Friday and after Friday. Obscene oil company profits in the face of record gas prices followed by home heating oil increases bring home every day what the DC journalists don't: this President is a miserable failure, and the Miers debacle this week along with the Fitzgerald probe of wargate oly exposes that which is below the surface. The work goes on, and 2006 is right around the corner. What Fitzgerald can't address, the voters can.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

here were my predictions:

I’m saying perjury for Rove, perjury, obstruction of
justice and use of Bulwer-Lytton prose for Libby, perjury for Hadley, and
impersonating a journalist for Miller.

I was right about Libby and Miller. The rest were merely exposed, not indicted.

[DemFromCT]

I love this WaPo article (great quotes):

The indictment of Libby, but no colleagues, was not the devastating blow that some in the administration had feared. But the action of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald nonetheless added to the sense that this is now an administration staggering to regain its equilibrium. The question now facing the embattled president is whether he will use this moment of vulnerability to reflect on what has gone wrong this year and why, and then look for ways to regain his effectiveness.

Citing both the indictment and the withdrawal of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court on Thursday, former GOP congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma said: "The president got a pretty good wake-up call. He needs to stop thinking about his grand legacy and being the all-time hero of the Republicans and concentrate on doing the job he was elected to do. He really has to get a grip on his administration."

Get a grip, Junior.

[emptywheel]

I keep wondering about Hadley.

If Johnson's source is correct, he said last week he believed he'd be indicted (which I thought would be hard without Rove's testimony). What changed? Or was that just more bad sourcing?

[DemFromCT]

making the Big Picture case:

Democrats portrayed Friday's indictment of a senior White House official in the C.I.A. leak case as evidence that the Bush administration was willing to risk national security to protect a flawed rationale for the war in Iraq. Republicans cautioned against a rush to judgment and sought to minimize any damage.

In a flood of stinging statements immediately after the announcement of charges against the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., leading Democrats quickly moved beyond the details of the indictment to the broader assertion that White House officials had ignored the law in mounting a furtive campaign to blunt criticism of President Bush's case for war.

The above is where it's going, and where it needs to be going. But if there are an indictment or two left in Fitz' bag, it'll hit harder than if DC were braced for it, as it was yesterday.

[flatpossum]

I too watched David Brooks on the News Hour last night. Did anyone else notice his Freudian slip, when he referred to Libby as "Liddy"? Classic.

[Mimikatz]

The Libby indictment makes it clear that Cheney was in this up to his neck: he told Libby on June 12, 2003 about Wilson's wife (which Libby may have already found out from the State Dept gossips); he may have participated in the discussions prior to June 12 about how to respond to Walter Pincus; he may have been the person who told Cathie Martin about Wilson's wife; he probably discussed on the July 12 plane ride what should be said to the media.

Libby is "Cheney's Cheney", so he must have at least cryptically described what to do with him.

And now that he has lost his Cheney, who will he appoint to replace him? Another denizen of the dark side, according to TAPPED in a piece largely taken from a year-old Post article. David Addington, among other things, was an advocate of torture, the one who advocated withholding documents from the Senate intel committee as well as the energy tast force documents, and is generally as secretive and enamored of unbridled executive power as Cheney.

As I said last night, Cheney is thoroughly unrepentant, and is really throwing down the gauntlet to Congress, and to Powell, who has been agitating against torture with the Senate. Cheney has total sway over the President in the foreign policy sphere, it is apparent, and there does not appear to be any counterweight to him. Rice is off touring the world, and Hadley is certainly not any stronger. Rumsfeld is probably nearly as strong, but certainly not very different from Cheney. Bush, on the verge of losing his brain, hasn't any organs left with which he could resist Cheney.

This creates a very dangerous situation for our country. Congressional oversight is the province of Congress. If they choose not to exercise it, then one hopes the Democrats can make a strong case for a new Congress.

But make no mistake--this is a very, very dangerous situation, and the Iranians aren't helping things with their rhetoric and their plans to open a new oil exchange. I have always argued that going into Iran is insane, but with insane persons at the helm, it can't be discounted completely.

It is time for the serious and patriotic members of the Senate to meet and plan out a strategy.

[Crab Nebula]

I want to put this out there as a new "thinking point":

Wouldn't you rather have Karl Rove working in the WH, continuing the Admin's tone-deaf ideological policy proposals? Clinging to the idea that they can gain majority support with initiatives like, say, Social Security Reform? Or over-the-top SC nominations? Continued "resolve" on Iraq?

So they can ride their glorious political principles to a rousing comeback in '06 and '08?

Please stay, Karl.

[demtom]

I was otherwise engaged yesterday, unavailable to chime in all the developments. My brief thoughts:

1) Fitzgerald is the best poker player I've ever seen. For two years he's shown no cards and given no hint. Yesterday he played one card -- and still managed to give no hint of what else he holds. I've heard people of equal/intelligent judgment argue there's no more to come, or tons more. No one knows.

2) This very quality of opaqueness makes it essentially impossible to smear him, no matter what follows. His seeming neutrality is the best body armor a prosecutor can possess.

3) Rove "still under investigation" but also still on the White House payroll is a dream come true for Dems. His dirtiness gets more apparent every day.

4) As DemfromCT says, all this is lagniappe for the opposition. Bush's administration is cratering on the merits, not on an extraneous scandal (which was the Watergate situation, and why the GOP dug out of it so quickly). The majority of people simply don' believe in Bush any more (witness the widespread rejection of yesterday's GDP number as being any kind of accurate measure of the economy). This thing doesn't even have to go anywhere further for Bush to be in trouble. But if it does, his troubles increase. Win-win for our side.