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Trail to the chief - will crisis sink
Bush?
Scotsman
Alex Massie
October 30, 2005
SHORTLY after 7.30am on Friday morning, much later than is his custom, Karl
Rove strolled out of his house in the plush Palisades neighbourhood of
north-west Washington. Rove, George Bush's chief fixer, was in ebullient form,
promising the gaggle of journalists waiting for him: "I am going to have a
great Friday and a fantastic weekend and hope you do too." He was, he smiled,
in "a very good mood".
An hour and a quarter earlier, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby had left his own
Washington home bound for the White House. He did not share his thoughts or
plans for the weekend with reporters.
By the time Libby reached the White House, his boss, Vice-President Dick
Cheney, was waiting for him. In an indication that this was not a routine
Friday, Cheney had arrived at work before 6.30am, an hour earlier than normal.
This would be the two men's last morning as colleagues. Libby had loyally
served Cheney for 15 years, now the end was nigh.
Six hours later, at 12.46pm, a federal grand jury issued indictments against
Libby on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false
statements to the FBI and the grand jury. The most serious political scandal of
the Bush presidency was blown open at the end of an already calamitous week for
the administration. By that point Libby was gone, having handed his letter of
resignation to President George Bush's chief of staff Andy Card.
Yet it could have been so much worse. Republicans across the city had feared
for the future of the administration. As late as Thursday, special prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald had been considering indicting Rove, Bush's deputy chief of
staff but arguably the second most important man in the White House, as well as
Libby.
Only a series of eleventh-hour conversations persuaded him to hold his fire
- at least for now. If Rove had been indicted for his part in the leaking of
Valerie Plame's identity, the White House would have been crippled.
But it was a sign of how febrile the mood had been in Washington last week
and how furiously the administration has been baling water, that the indictment
of the Vice-President's chief of staff could be spun as a better-than-expected
development. For Libby was a key player in the administration - Cheney's
national security adviser and an assistant to the President himself. He was the
most powerful aide to the most powerful Vice-President in the history of the
Republic.
So, the question remains: how can the leaking, creaky timbers of the USS
Bush be repaired while it is still buffeted by the political storms in
Washington?
As former Congressman Mickey Edwards 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."
That will be a tougher task than it would have been two months ago before
Hurricane Katrina, the Plame investigation and a bungled Supreme Court
nomination, which spent much of the administration's political capital and
undermined its credibility. Despite that: "He's not a lame duck," one White
House political adviser warned, "he's a clumsy duck. This can still be
fixed."
Even so, the mood in the White House has been jumpy these past two weeks.
Rove's fate was not to be discussed but cast an inescapable shadow over the
administration. The strain reached the Oval Office too. "The President is just
unhappy in general and casting blame all about. Andy [Card] gets his share.
Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big
share," said one Bush insider.
"Traditionally, Presidents have dealt with scandal by focusing on foreign
policy. But for this particular President, that might be tougher," said Mark
Hansen, a presidential historian at the University of Chicago.
Indeed, if there was any political upside to last week's events, it was that
coverage of the death of the 2,000th American serviceman to be killed in Iraq
was overshadowed by the twin problems of the Plame affair and the nomination of
Bush's lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court.
By the same token, however, the passing of the Iraqi constitution seems a
distant memory and the speech on the war on terror Bush gave on Friday might as
well have remained unprinted. The sole line from it judged newsworthy was the
President's quip: "Thanks for the chance to get out of Washington."
Questions remain, however. Fitzgerald's investigation continues and it is
possible Rove will eventually face charges. Other aspects of the affair remain
harder to explain. Chief among them, what was Libby thinking? And, who, if
anyone, might he have been protecting?
The carelessness of his clumsy cover-up in testimony to the grand jury and
the FBI was out of character.
It prompted fevered wishful thinking amongst many Democrats that the
cover-up trail might reach beyond Libby, possibly to Cheney or even, at a
stretch, the President himself. If so, they were to be disappointed. Though
congressional Democrats want to use the indictments to reopen the debate on
pre-war intelligence, Fitzgerald was adamant: "This indictment is not about the
war."
Although some Republicans would like to attack the special prosecutor,
painting the case as another, regrettable, example of prosecutorial
overstretch, this is unlikely to stick. As Orrin Hatch, the veteran Republican
senator from Utah, admitted: "Knowing Fitzgerald as I do, he's a competent,
very, very good professional and you have to doubt that he would bring charges
that he didn't have back-up for."
The indictments put the cherry on a dreadful week for the embattled White
House. On Wednesday morning senate majority leader Bill Frist and the majority
whip Mitch McConell travelled down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to
discuss the state of the Harriet Miers nomination with the President. It was
clear it was in trouble. Strategy meetings at the White House, including one in
Cheney's office, did little to improve the mood. Miers was sinking fast.
In the early evening, Frist telephoned Card to deliver a grim message: the
mood was hardening on the hill and the Senate would not easily consent to
Harriet Miers succeeding Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. That was it.
At 8.30pm Miers called the President and withdrew.
Miers was doomed almost from the moment she was selected. Although some
evangelical leaders, such as James Dobson, expressed support, the uproar from
conservative intellectuals and sceptical leaders of the conservative movement
was immediate. The White House was put on the back foot, defending a nomination
that had been carelessly vetted and was far too vulnerable to attack.
The President has vowed to select a new Supreme Court nominee as soon as
possible. Having returned to her role as White House counsel, Miers will play
an important role in advising the President and vetting would-be nominees.
A new candidate that unites the conservative movement will reinvigorate
Republicans for the prospect of a juicy and ugly, but they feel winnable, fight
against Democrats in the Senate.
That will stem the bleeding at the White House but even though this
self-inflicted wound may heal, the scar will remain. The Miers nomination died
because of conservative opposition and because no-one was prepared to take a
bullet for the President and defend Miers.
The days of the President receiving a free pass from Congress are over.What
critics call the Bush "cult of personality" still has its adherents, but others
are leaving the compound. The President's ability to push through the rest of
his domestic policy agenda has been drastically weakened.
"The gravest political threat to his presidency is that he has no popular,
high-profile initiatives," argued Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review.
"His social security initiative is dead; his guest-worker proposal might,
unlike Miers, truly fracture the right." Add to that the continued unpopularity
of the war and all Rove's famous political skills will be needed to steady the
ship.
The Miers humiliation, so soon after the bungled response to Hurricane
Katrina, has been blamed in part upon the Plame affair. According to this line
of thinking, the sword of Damocles hanging over Rove has distracted Bush's
political consiglieri from his job.
Appointing his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court showed Bush as out of
touch and hubristic.
For some observers this was proof an isolated White House needs to talk to
more people, and Bush should use the opportunity to reshuffle his staff,
bringing in new blood.
"I think the White House needs some more experienced hands. Karl Rove can't
do it all by himself," said Trent Lott, the former majority leader from
Mississippi.
Rove's friends say that given the threat of prosecution has, at least for
now, been lifted he can return to plotting the administration's political
strategy. "Now we start digging out," said one confidante.
The stench of indictments is not so easy to forget, however. "They [the
administration] wanted the President to restore honour and integrity to the
White House," said Congressman Christopher Shays - a Republican from
Connecticut. "Whatever agenda the President wants to pursue, if he hasn't
re-established a strong, ethical standard, he's going to fail. Americans don't
like to be lied to."
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