Corn on McClellan on Rove
David Corn: "That was for sure. Other reporters took similar swings at McClellan. He just stood there, counting the minutes, perhaps silently trying to convince himself that he was in his happy place and that he was not being beaten into a pulp."
For more and great vid from c-span, see Crooks and Liars.
posted by Victor Laszlo @ 7/11/2005
18 comments
18 Comments:
Yes, there's got to be a tipping point when the scales fall from their eyes.
I do think there is going to be a tipping point, as Lazlo says. (by the way, are the scales like snake scales or like weight scales? I never got that whole thing). As impenetrable as these sources often are, the email note in question has a number of very interesting tidbits in it. Double secret background is juvenile and ridiculous. Saying that identifying Mr. Wilson's wife does not mean that you have named the individual is beyond crazy and finally, the gag reel of conflicting statements by the president, rove and scott is getting quite a bit of air play. Why? Because of its absurdity. It is hard to argue with back to back to back to back conflicting statements on video. The media knows it has a good story. McClellan is probably a short timer in his job since you can see he does not like to be the person on the hook here. I think the real inflection point is going to be when this little issue starts to hurt Bush's work on the supreme court nomination. He is going to want a clean slate politically in the next three months. I would not be surprised if he is thinking about who could replace Rove on paper and how he could retain his services in an informal way.
Like the politburo in the USSR, watch the photos of who is greeting Bush when his plane lands, who is carrying his water and who starts to be called the architect.
Arthur,
Maybe so among the very hard core, but some among the hard core might be pissed about something else and looking for a chance to burn bush. And don't forget about the not-so-hard core and elite opinion, which also matter. Liberal Oasis notes that some Repubs are indeed worried about the scandal:
"It's very interesting that amid these Democratic attacks, though, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Republican leader, told me today that he will not comment.
He's not rising to Karl Rove's defense and he's not attacking him either.
You would expect the Republican leader to be stepping up and defending the White House at this moment, but Frist says he does not know enough about the grand jury investigation.
He doesn't want to get into the details of this.
Henry went on to say that he felt GOPers were “nervous privately.”
the country is narrowly separated on the issues, the parties are widely separated in ideology. I really do believe that the masses are going to start feeling disenfranchised soon and will begin to force both sides to adapt. That means I disagree with Arthur. I also think that the comfort people found in Bush's vague moralism is slipping with each body bag that gets shipped back to the us. Intellectual and ideological arguments start to crumble quickly when the bodies pile up. Watch who is actively circling the wagons and who is passively standing by. Frist is one, McCain will be another.
Gotta go with Arthur on this one... I listened to Rush on and off the past two days in a commute from Northern Jersey, and he for one, isn't equivocating at all. And I think his rhetoric will work: Rove didn't do anything illegal (most experts seem to agree), and the Dems will lose out by making this an issue if Rove isn't further investigated (does anyone think he will be?), and Bush ignores the issue, doesn't back down in the least, and lets the issue fade away (as he always does). Of course, Rush is a big fat liar, but soon even Rush will realize that he's better off if he just drops the issue, as the Bush admin will, and the general public probably won't give two shits. Rush even claims that only 1% of the public even knows who Rove is -- probably a bit of an exaggeration, but is anyone who likes Rove going to change camps on this issue?
I don't think experts agree that Rove didn't break the law. This idea that he didn't leak her name and therefore didn't break the law is not true. It's the person's identity that matters. Talking Points Memo has some good coverage of this:
You can read the whole thing here. But here are some examples of the language the law uses ...
identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent ... intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent
Intent is a very important component of the law, as is how the person in question learned the information. And either could be enough to get Rove off the hook. But the idea that the individuals name has to be used is completely ridiculous. But that didn't stop Charlie Black from bagging the AP pretty nicely on this one.
Well, that wasn't my point, and it isn't the one Rush brings up either. Rush doesn't say Rove didn't break the law because he didn't reveal the name. It does seem inarguable that he revealed the identity, even if he didn't reveal the name. He says that revealing the name was intended to warn off the reporter from falsely writing reports on the Wilson situation, and so is not "breaking the law" in that the intention was not malicious. Rush says Rove was just doing the reporter a favor. Of course, it's entirely likely that Rove was trying to punsh Wilson, as Wilson claims. But I would guess that Rush is right in the sense that malicious intent would be unprovable. And the law experts I've heard speaking to that point seem to agree. Have you heard differently? And anyway, do you really think that Rove is going to be convicted of treason, let alone even investigated further? They would have done more cover up if they felt that the e-mail could be considered sufficient evidence of a crime. Rove gave the reporter permission to release the e-mail, for God's sake.
Dumpling - time to break out of the Rush-induced fog:
How Many Laws Might Have Benedict Rove Broken?
Yesterday, LiberalOasis discussed how Rove may have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law that most are focused on.
But there are other laws Rove may have broken.
Mark A.R. Kleiman suggests it’s more likely Rove may have violated the Espionage Act and also the law against “making false statements to officials.”
On CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, John Dean suggested Rove may have violated laws against “converting government information to his own political uses” and “conspiring with others to do what he's not being paid as a government employee to do.”
Dobbs summarized his comments by saying, “Effectively, fraud and conspiracy.”
Dean also speculated about violating the Espionage Act in a 2003 FindLaw piece (hat tip to one of LO’s lawyer readers.)
Of course, most of this speculation is based on what little info about the case has been leaked to the public. This likely goes far deeper than what we know was communicated between Rove and Cooper.
so, how do you explain Bush's pass on supporting Rove on the issue when Rove was sitting behind him yesterday? If it was part of his ignore stance, I think that is telling, because I have a quote on my wall with Nixon saying that watergate was nothing more than a PR problem. This is the same thing, to a lesser degree (notice that I did not say much lesser), and I think that it has legs more because it ties into the whole homeland security issue. I still think you have to look at the plate of issues the administration is dealing with: pressure from the right on the court nom, pressure from the middle on the war, the fragmented nature of congressional support in general toward the administration. None of these is managed in isolation. They are concurent issues with trade-offs. That is where Rove gets the squeeze, because it calls into question his ability to be trusted and consulted by the people on the fringe of the inner circle. It would have been easy for Bush to pull out the Gonzalez text and edit and reissue for Rove, so why didn't he?
This just in:
http://reuters.excite.com//article/20050714/2005-07-14T112551Z_01_N14461003_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BUSH-POLL-DC.html
Public seems to be reacting. That said, do you think most people understand the concept of veracity? I gotta tell you, I think that question needed to be simplified for a general poll.
..."may have violated...."
..."may have violated...."
look, do I think what he did SHOULD be a crime? Probably, (I although feel that in this case what he did pales in comparison to his election tactics and the depravity of so many policies he's been a part of implementing.) But, I agree with Arthur, and would recommend that you don't hold your breath until you see Rove in jail or fired by the White House. I would be shocked if the White House even admitted that Rove did anything wrong inadvertantly. And probably it's wishfull thinking to believe that anyone other than liberals, who already hate Rove, will even care anyway.
Rush hasn't induced any fog. His manipulation of facts is obvious and clearly partisan. He's incapable of saying anything that is anywhere close to any kind of objective interpretation of events. But he can be instructive, in that listening to him can give you insight as to how the Bushies are going to try to spin things.
Meta -- I couldn't follow the link. Is the poll specifically on this issue, or just a general reflection of a reduction in Bush's popularity? You guys are dreaming. Don't even think about comparing this to Watergate. Bush didn't support Rove, but he also let him sit next to him, and he certainly didn't criticize him. Of course he didn't support Rove -- that's in keeping with the way they handle all this shit. Ignore it, and it will go away. Don't respond.
And another thing. Rush is right about something else....the Dems are only going to be hurt by pushing this issue farther than it merits.
I just saw a letter from MoveOn posted on Youngphilly, asking people to gather in front of the White House to demand that Bush fire Rove. The letter describes the horrible thing that Rove did in exposing the identity of a CIA agent. Look, all of this disingenuity is only going to backfire, and it's really taking the low road. In reality, did Rove really put Plame in danger, even if he did knowlingly out her (which, in all fairness, has not been proven)? And since when do we really care about the stress level of CIA agents? Things are so messed up right now that the CIA becomes a positive force, because they were actually to the left of Bush on Iraq policies -- but this is the CIAAAAA!!!!!! we're talking about.
Of course Bush is being inconsistant if he doesn't fire Rove. But that inconsistancy is so minor compared to other inconsistancies that Americans gave Bush a Mulligan on. MoveOn thinks that this issue is simple enough that average Joe can comprehend it. That's pretty condescending, but it's also stupid. People aren't really going to care about this issue.
I think Impenetrable One has the right view in putting this in the broader context. Arthur and Dumpling seemed to have retreated into determinism and cynicism--we know what Bush will do, we know what issues people will/will not get upset about, don't hold your breath, nothing will ever change. But we don't know any of these things for sure. We don't know what people will get upset about, we don't know what will "have legs", we don't know what will happen in the future. Just because the Bushies have wriggled out of downing st and other scandals it doesn't mean this will always be so. What was the public's awareness of watergate or whitewater as the scandal was progressing? The Dems and MoveOn are right to push it. After all, it is not in doubt that Rove revealed Plame's identity and that this is a crime. The fact that Bush's credibility is going down in the poll is significant.
Given that perhaps Rove "didn't know" about Plame's identity being secret," and she was unlikely to again be stationed overseas, it isn't clear that a crime was committed according to the wording of the laws. You keep making that assumption, and it certainly hasn't been confirmed, and it likely won't be. And there certainly is enough wiggle room here that even if we think a "crime" was committed, Rove will never be convicted by a special prosescutor.
Watergate was a massive coverup of a clear crime. This is in no way analogous.
I read about that poll last night. There's no clear causal link between the popularity drop in the poll and the whole Rove thing.
I don't think that the backfire against the silliness of MoveOn and the like will be huge -- but while this story may gain traction, it won't have a significant impact on any policies.
What really bothers me is that the press is getting all worked up in a lather about this issue, but the basically ignored really important issues like WMDs, blah, blah,blah. If the press had only hammared White House press secretaries on those more important issues the same way they're doing so on the Rove issue. It's interesting to speculate as to why they're jumping on this issue after basically ignoring so many others....
Atrios speculates that this story is really about the press's realization that they've been being used as dupes and they are embarassed about it. Perhaps it will finally wake them up and get them to start asking tougher questions.
You misunderstood my watergate comment. The point was that NIXON thought it was a PR issue. And then it bit him on the ass. It was meant to show that a President, regardless of or maybe because of his position, often underestimates the impact of a situation. And since he normally uses key and trusted advisors to help him call the shots, this president is stuck because his best spin doctor is the subject of the issue, in the same way that Nixon's key people were. So, think about that for a while. Karl can't micromanage this issue within the white house. Who can do it as well as he? What impact will this have on Rove's ability to lead any other efforts in the short term? Is it best that he be formally removed so that he can informally continue to advise? That was my intent. And, finally, poop. 'Cause I just like the word.
Actually, Arthur, I think the main strategy of the right wing is to imply that Democrats are, well, faggots. And your analysis would fit right in with that strategy.
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