From a political standpoint the president would have been better off had he nominated to the Court the strictest of fire-eating “originalists” -- perhaps someone anxious that our founding fathers’ intentions be re-enshrined by census-adjusting for the two-fifths-inflated African-American population, or denouncing Congress’ amended power to levy an income tax as the Bolshevist coup it was. You know, someone who genuinely reflects modern Republican thinking.
As it is, things are much too amicable. John G. Roberts just isn’t the kind of guy even most lefties can get steamed up about, principally because there’s little in his background that indicates anything other than a pinstriped Boy Scout who escorts little old ladies to tea-sipping Federalist Society meetings.
So Bush will get his man on the court, but his less than strife-ridden choice leaves plenty of front-page room on which headline writers can splash the drip, drip, drip of Rovegate, such as yesterday’s “Plame's Identity Marked As Secret” (Washington Post).
Roberts is the distraction who wasn’t, which permits mental images of a special prosecuting Patrick “Michael” Fitzgerald to flourish with undistracted glee. “You have to answer for Valerie, Karlo. Only don't tell me you're innocent, because it insults my intelligence and makes me very, very angry. Now who was it? Barzini or Fleischer?”
Whack.
Meanwhile other White House mobsters who joined Bush on that now-infamous trip to Africa on which the now-infamous classified State Department memo was toted along are either lawyering up, or taking it on the lam. Senior Advisor Dan Bartlett was one -- his attorney “has refused to discuss the case”; while former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was another and “could not be reached for comment” -- yesterday, today, or next year.
It’s understandable that these boys would be ducking press scrutiny since the fresh news leaks aren’t exactly mirroring Republican talking points. The facts of the memo in question are a far cry from what Roveian apologists have been spewing for weeks.
“Any Bush administration official who read [the memo] should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials,” reported the Washington Post. “The paragraph identifying [Plame] as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the ‘secret’ level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as ‘secret’ the names of officers whose identities are covert.”
You’ll recall that GOP swat teams once fanned out to spread the fantasy that Valerie Plame was no spook, no covert anything, no person of any vital importance except to hubby for his meal tickets. The new line is now Rove’s old one: That the deputy chief of staff, a man loathe to engage in wicked goings on, knew nothing of the memo’s significance until “people in the special prosecutor’s office” handed it to him.
Other Republican talking points are just as unbelievably silly; for example Rove was only trying to spare Time magazine embarrassment by wrongly reporting on the Ambassador Wilson story. As Mark Shields mocked: “This is a side of the man we have not seen before -- selflessly saving gullible newsmen from publishing anything inaccurate.”
One marvels at such party-line piffle until recalling what made the GOP so successful: the Big Lie, no matter how silly, hammered over and over till folks think it’s an old truism. That chestnut of a strategy is weakening, however, in the face of so many rapidly gathering cold facts.
So to get Karl off the front page and somebody else on, new heights of political audacity are called for. For instance Bush could summarily drop John Roberts’ nomination, explaining that John is too well to represent the party’s interests on the Supreme Court. Then he could nominate, say, Robert Novak. He seems to know the law pretty well.
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