Late Night Plame-Related Scowling

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday. Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war. Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status. It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry. (...)

The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program. But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House's full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought. The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson's wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip."

A few points:

First: it has already been reported that Karl Rove told Bush that he had been involved in leaking Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. This story is one more nail in the coffin of the idea that when Bush told the nation that he wanted to get to the bottom of this, and that anyone who was involved would be punished, he was lying. Either that, or he is completely out of control of his own administration. As Digby notes, Cheney himself was less than forthcoming on MSNBC in September, 2003:

"I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess — like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came..."

Second: this means that either Bush or Cheney could have obviated the need for Fitzgerald's investigation at any time by simply coming clean about what they knew. We have already heard Republicans complain about the expense of the investigation. It's actually remarkably low:

"They note: "In its first 15 months, the investigation cost $723,000, according to the Government Accountability Office."

Think about that number for a minute. It's astonishingly low by any standard. Consider that over about the same period of time that Fitzgerald spent $723,000, independent counsel David M. Barrett spent more than $3 million. Who the heck is Barrett? He was appointed more than ten years ago to investigate then-Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros. It's not clear what he's been doing lately, other than tidying up. He's spent more than $21 million in all.

And as George Lardner Jr. wrote in The Washington Post on March 31, 2001, by that point independent counsel investigations of Clinton had cost almost $60 million -- about $52 million by Kenneth W. Starr alone."

Still, Bush or Cheney could have saved the country that $723,000, as well as freeing Patrick Fitzgerald to go back to prosecuting the likes of John Gotti and Osama bin Laden, by simply telling the nation what they knew. Instead, they lied.

Third: it means that the potential consequences of anyone cooperating with Fitzgerald just got a lot more interesting. And I agree with Billmon on the likelihood that someone will flip:

"One suspects that when the inside story of this investigation is finally told, it will be seen that the key to breaking the case open was the alacrity with which top White House aides clawed their way to the tape recorder in order to squeal on each other. No Gordon Liddys in this bunch, I think."

Of course, we're still hearing that perjury and obstruction of justice are no big deal. Apparently, the legal obligation to cooperate truthfully with a criminal investigation is just for the little people -- you and me -- and not for those who have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution and the laws. That's what Kay Bailey Hutchinson seems to think:

"Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.""

Although (Digby again) she took a different view during the Clinton impeachment hearings:

"If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of 'lying,' but would not be guilty of 'perjury.'

If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be 'perjury.' Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man's injury or death.

Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.

The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders."

The NYT reported Sunday that "allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor." The 'perjury and obstruction of justice are just technicalities' argument has been around for some time now, but the attacks on Patrick Fitzgerald are just ramping up:

"As the White House and Republicans brace for possible indictments in the CIA leak probe, defenders have launched a not-so-subtle campaign against the prosecutor handling the case.

"He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things," one White House ally said, referring to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald."

Leaving aside the question how someone can be moralistic and have no conscience at the same time, I wonder what paragon of virtue sent that little anonymous poison dart, and from what lofty moral realm he or she looks down on a prosecutor who seems to have done his job extremely professionally, and in a remarkably apolitical way?

Which brings me to one last point. These are people who trash other people as a matter of course. Their defenders in the media are now arguing that this is just how Washington works, and that to go after people who out CIA agents in the course of a campaign of character assassination is just to criminalize politics. Anyone who is remotely inclined to accept this as "normal" should remember not only that this involved outing a CIA agent, but what character assassination is like under normal circumstances. Consider Karl Rove's modus operandi:

"Some of Rove's darker tactics cut even closer to the bone. One constant throughout his career is the prevalence of whisper campaigns against opponents. The 2000 primary campaign, for example, featured a widely disseminated rumor that John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had betrayed his country under interrogation and been rendered mentally unfit for office. More often a Rove campaign questions an opponent's sexual orientation. Bush's 1994 race against Ann Richards featured a rumor that she was a lesbian, along with a rare instance of such a tactic's making it into the public record—when a regional chairman of the Bush campaign allowed himself, perhaps inadvertently, to be quoted criticizing Richards for "appointing avowed homosexual activists" to state jobs. (...)

But no other example of Rove's extreme tactics that I encountered quite compares to what occurred during another 1994 judicial campaign in Alabama. In that year Harold See first ran for the supreme court, becoming the rare Rove client to lose a close race. His opponent, Mark Kennedy, an incumbent Democratic justice and, as George Wallace's son-in-law, a member in good standing of Alabama's first family of politics, was no stranger to hardball politics. "The Wallace family history and what they all went through, that's pretty rough politics," says Joe Perkins, who managed Kennedy's campaign. "But it was a whole new dimension with Rove." (...)

Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children's Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.

Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out — he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take.""

Stop and imagine being Mark Kennedy. One fine day, you start to realize that people are looking at you strangely; maybe people you have always thought of as friends. They ask you peculiar, pointed questions about your work with abused kids. They shy away from you at parties, and keep their children away from you. You don't know what's going on. Finally, someone tells you: there's a rumor that you sexually molest children; that that's what's behind your interest in abused kids. It's all over the place. No one knows who started it, but a lot of people are talking.

Imagine what it would feel like to know that that was being said about you, behind your back. Now imagine how little you'd be able to do about it. You don't know who has heard this, and who believes it. Even if you did, what would you do? Start going up to people and saying: you may have heard that I'm a pedophile; I'd like to assure you that it's not true -- ? Wouldn't that just make it worse?

You might then reflect on the fact that a lot of people react to things like this by thinking: well, who knows what the truth is; still, where there's smoke, there's fire. Even people who don't believe that you're actually a pedophile might nonetheless think that there's probably something just a little bit off about you; otherwise, this story wouldn't have gotten started, would it? Surely, your interest in helping children isn't exactly normal, is it? Surely there's something fishy and perverse about you, even if it hasn't ever gone as far as actually raping a small boy? People will probably think about you that way forever, since people do not, in general, suspect the Big Lie.

That's what Karl Rove does. And think of this point as well: "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship." By doing things like this to his opponents, he is trying, on purpose, to drive good people out of public service. If you wanted to harm America, one of the best ways to go about it would be to make the costs of public service so high that only a saint or a masochist would incur them. There are other ways that decent people can try to contribute to their country; why should they subject themselves to this sort of thing when they might just as well run their local chapter of the United Way? The more this happens, the fewer decent public servants we will have, and the worse off we will all be.

That's why, while I usually don't go in for schadenfreude, I make an exception for Karl Rove. He destroys decent people for a living. And it's also why I am not particularly sympathetic to the plight of the man who hired him and kept him on long after his role in the Plame leak was clear:

"Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."

The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.

Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical.""

If you're going to dish it out, you ought to be able to take it; and if you're going to hire a man who ruins people's lives on a regular basis, you ought to be able to handle it when hiring him ruins yours. Here, as always, though, Bush seems to assume that he is exempt from the normal rules. Other people's lives, not to mention other people's countries, get ruined to keep his poll numbers high; but his being so much as inconvenienced was not supposed to be part of the plan. And it's certainly not part of the plan that he should have to own up to his own role in it. Much better to keep on chewing out his staff than to risk reflecting on his own responsibility for his current predicament.

But remember: George W. Bush is restoring honor and integrity to the White House, and bringing a new tone to Washington DC.

Right.

Comments

[hilzoy]

Naturally, within five minutes of posting this, I discover that Mark Kleiman has written a really great post about this. A (large) part of it:

"With Mr. Bush's allies out there pre-emptively sliming Patrick Fitzgerald and claiming that what he's investigating isn't a crime at all, what could have possessed Mr. Bush when he said last week, "The special prosecutor is conducting a very serious investigation. He's doing it in a very dignified way..." ?

I can come up with three explanations:

1. It happens to be the truth, and Mr. Bush prefers to tell the truth.

2. It was a generous thing to say, and Mr. Bush is habitually generous to his adversaries.

3. Mr. Fitzgerald has Mr. Bush by the gonads, and Mr. Bush, a coward as well as a bully, is begging him not to squeeze.

Which seems most plausible to you?

Of course, if you choose #3, you'd be forced to believe that Mr. Bush is, disloyally, putting his own welfare ahead of the welfare of a group of men who have been unfailingly loyal to him. And yet we all know that Bush puts a high value on loyalty.

So I guess it must be either #1 or #2.

Stop laughing, dammit! This is serious business! Don't you have any respect for a wartime President? If you don't stop laughing, the terrorists will have won."

[Shinobi]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I don't see why people refer to happiness about the Plame investigation as Schadenfreude. If the investigation were somehow crooked, if Rove, Libby and anyone else were getting treatment they didn't deserve, then it would be shameful to be happy at their problems. But so far, it appears that they are being held account, with all due legal process, for activities of questionable legality. I am happy to see that even the president's advisors must defend actions that may have been illegal, and will be punished if those actions are - and I'm not shameful about it in the least.

[Opus]

Shinobi, you're right, but I suspect people use the term because Rove has gone so long without paying for his despicable behavior. Add to that (for me), the fact that the President drapes himself in his Christianity while his closest advisor makes a mockery of Jesus' teachings, and the fact that Rove is regularly praised for his behavior, and you have folks who see any Rove indictment -- no matter how justified in its specifics -- as a (hopefully) first step in his getting what's coming to him.

Of course, what's really coming to him is much, much darker and damn scary, but I don't imagine we'll get to see that.

[CharleyCarp]

"Lawyers in the case." This isn't coming from Fitzgerald, and it certainly isn't coming from Cheney/Libby. Looks to me like THIS is a Rove operation. And it looks like 'no harm, no foul' is recognized as insufficient as the official narrative.

Maybe it's Rice/Hadley, though.

You know, there are plenty of times when vague identification of anonymous sources is OK, where the identity of the source isn't every bit as important as the story. This is not one of those times. I guess reporters are just too caught up in their little gotta-preserve-confidentiality world to see it.

[NeoDude]

Ah....Republican's just doin' God's work...you must be jealous.

[st]

Shinobi - not to quibble, but...well, yes, to quibble: schadenfreude, in its English transliteration, anyway, simply means to take joy from the suffering of others. There is no definitional exemption for enjoying the suffering of those who really, really deserve it, and it doesn't only apply to enjoyment of the unjust suffering of others. Rove is (presumably) suffering, and would certainly suffer if indicted. Deriving joy from that fact is schadenfreude.

The impulse away from schadenfreude is presumably part of an intrinsic revulsion to suffering, in any form, and in this case specifically, a distaste for the metallic savor of revenge.

As for me, I'm no paragon of virtue. I'll be delighted if Rove goes down.

[ajay]

How pleasant it is, and how reviving
To the spirits of just men long oppress'd,
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might.

[spartikus]

Question: Does the Plame Affair (assuming it concludes as anticipated) destroy or reinforce your faith in democracy? The latter for obvious reasons. The former because, if it hadn't been for those pesky kids and that mangy dog, they would have gotten away with it.

ie. Is this an example of random chance - a flukish misstep by those in power - or an example of the "inevitability of institutional structure" (or some such) of the American Republic righting a wrong?

[John Thullen]

Schadenfreude can be temporarily satisfying but it does not satiate. On top of that, my liberal sensibilities get to me; Rove's suffering, if it is not wholly manipulation on his part, will get to me and I'll then feel badly for my engagement in the previous Schadenfreude.

Richard Nixon's Shakespearean (one of the minor Kings) blubbering at his resignation press conference completely ruined my previous ferocious Schadenfreude.

But then, when King Richard III offered his kingdom for a horse, I'd have given him some sort of equine creature on which to ride out of there. Christ, how would you feel if you had a hump and a limp and a gnarled little hand, the poor sod?

Now, I would like to see Rove led around on a leash to apologize to legions of various people, John McCain's adopted child being one of them. Then he may retire from his, umm, service, to my government and sell breakfast cereal by ruthless means in the private sector. There will be a restraining order keeping him two or three million miles away from government.

I will then turn away, a tear forming in my eye. My bodyguard, not given to indulging in any sort of freude, will watch carefully to make sure Karl does no lunging at my back with long knives.

My favorite decoying and frustration of Schadenfreude in a film occurred in "The Night Of The Hunter", that uneven but haunting work directed by Charles Laughton and performed in weirdly by the great Robert Mitchum. After a buildup to pure malevolence by the Mitchum character, the Lillian Gish character shoots him in the behind with buckshot and he gives a whoop and a yelp and runs to hide in the barn, where he is taken into custody.

It is the "yelp" and the "whoop" that simultaneously dissipate and satisfy the foregoing buildup of Schadenfreude on the viewer's part. It is not the sound of pure evil taking buckshot in the butt; it is the sound (that it comes out of Mitchum's mouth is doubly delicious) of a mere scalawag* who managed to overshoot his mere scalawagginess.

The viewer feels, I don't know, like the guy who found Saddam in his hidey-hole. Vaguely disappointed. Incidentally, the resemblance of George W. Bush to the Lillian Gish character is illusory.

*If you look up "scalawag" in the dictionary, your inner Gary Farber will tell you that there must be a better word to use in this comment. ;)

[Barry]

I'm split on that - there's one side of me that figures that when you break the law as often as they do, with arrogance and carelessness, then the odds are against you. The other side of me shivers at the realization that, if your law-breaking gains you power, you're less vulnerable to the consequences of it.

[Jesurgislac]

I got into a brief discussion on Volokh with regard to the Plame Affair, and it seems to me that those who still maintain that nothing happened that was wrong (especially if no indictments are handed down specifically for leaking Plame's identity) really need to answer the question: If what [whoever did it] was so innocent, why (a) didn't the White House do it openly, and why (b) didn't [whoever did it] stand up promptly two years ago and admit "Yes, I did it"?

Anyone would think, reading their comments (it's findable: it's the latest post on Volokh to do with Plame) that Novak's column was an official White House bulletin, issued as a public service to protect the public from the hidden dangers of nepotistic, crony appointments.

[Jesurgislac]

John Thullen suggests: Then he may retire from his, umm, service, to my government and sell breakfast cereal by ruthless means in the private sector. There will be a restraining order keeping him two or three million miles away from government.

I'd go for 19.489 AUs, which would let him sell breakfast cereal on Uranus*.

Your restraining order would let him sell breakfast cereal well beyond the orbit of the Moon, but not even a tenth of the way to Mars. Not bad.

*That's funnier if you're British. Sorry.

[Bernard Yomtov]

(Very) small complaint: I wish reporters who write about Libby and want to start with his name would not include the first initial. I always think I'm reading an affidavit or something.

[Phil]

Fry: Did you build the Smellescope?

Farnsworth: No, I remembered that I'd built one last year. Go ahead. Try it. You'll find that every heavenly body has its own particular scent. Here, I'll point it at Jupiter.

[Fry sniffs.]

Fry: Smells like strawberries.

Farnsworth: Exactly! And now Saturn.

[Fry sniffs.]

Fry: Pine needles. Oh, man, this is great! Hey, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus.

[He laughs.]

Leela: I don't get it.

Farnsworth: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.

Fry: Oh. What's it called now?

Farnsworth: Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you.

[Phil]

Fry: Did you build the Smellescope?

Farnsworth: No, I remembered that I'd built one last year. Go ahead. Try it. You'll find that every heavenly body has its own particular scent. Here, I'll point it at Jupiter.

[Fry sniffs.]

Fry: Smells like strawberries.

Farnsworth: Exactly! And now Saturn.

[Fry sniffs.]

Fry: Pine needles. Oh, man, this is great! Hey, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus.

[He laughs.]

Leela: I don't get it.

Farnsworth: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.

Fry: Oh. What's it called now?

Farnsworth: Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you.

[dmbeaster]

Can we now cut the crap about "is Bush evil or just clueless?" It has to be obvious from his Plame charade ("I don't know who did it and want to get to the bottom of it") that he is gladly neck deep in the swill.

There is a reason why his chosen nickname for Rove is "turd blossom." Bush has willingly employed the gutter for his own gain since the beginning of his political career, and as others have noted in great detail, was schooled in the gutter of politics during the long years while in his father's shadow.

He is basically an evil little s@#$t.

spartikus:

Is this an example of random chance - a flukish misstep by those in power - or an example of the "inevitability of institutional structure" (or some such) of the American Republic righting a wrong?

Like Blanche DuBois, who clung to the philosophy of depending on the kindness of strangers, our institutions do rely to some degree on luck and the missteps of the evil to finally bring them down. But this is nothing to fret about unless you are only happy with perfect justice. What really matters is to be able to check the excesses of the mighty at some point in time so that the amount of harm they can inflict is limited.

And since crooks never seem to be able to rein in their own excesses (this is my last job -- really!), they inevitably make one too many missteps and go down. It would be nice if they would get cut down earlier and spare us all the pain, but no one really wants to live in Singapore and have every crime small or large always get its due. Freedom has its price, which includes having to put up with inefficiency in ridding ourselves of the bad guys.

[dmbeaster]

Can we now cut the crap about "is Bush evil or just clueless?" It has to be obvious from his Plame charade ("I don't know who did it and want to get to the bottom of it") that he is gladly neck deep in the swill.

There is a reason why his chosen nickname for Rove is "turd blossom." Bush has willingly employed the gutter for his own gain since the beginning of his political career, and as others have noted in great detail, was schooled in the gutter of politics during the long years while in his father's shadow.

He is basically an evil little s@#$t.

spartikus:

Is this an example of random chance - a flukish misstep by those in power - or an example of the "inevitability of institutional structure" (or some such) of the American Republic righting a wrong?

Like Blanche DuBois, who clung to the philosophy of depending on the kindness of strangers, our institutions do rely to some degree on luck and the missteps of the evil to finally bring them down. But this is nothing to fret about unless you are only happy with perfect justice. What really matters is to be able to check the excesses of the mighty at some point in time so that the amount of harm they can inflict is limited.

And since crooks never seem to be able to rein in their own excesses (this is my last job -- really!), they inevitably make one too many missteps and go down. It would be nice if they would get cut down earlier and spare us all the pain, but no one really wants to live in Singapore and have every crime small or large always get its due. Freedom has its price, which includes having to put up with inefficiency in ridding ourselves of the bad guys.

[dmbeaster]

Can we now cut the crap about "is Bush evil or just clueless?" It has to be obvious from his Plame charade ("I don't know who did it and want to get to the bottom of it") that he is gladly neck deep in the swill.

There is a reason why his chosen nickname for Rove is "turd blossom." Bush has willingly employed the gutter for his own gain since the beginning of his political career, and as others have noted in great detail, was schooled in the gutter of politics during the long years while in his father's shadow.

He is basically an evil little s@#$t.

spartikus:

Is this an example of random chance - a flukish misstep by those in power - or an example of the "inevitability of institutional structure" (or some such) of the American Republic righting a wrong?

Like Blanche DuBois, who clung to the philosophy of depending on the kindness of strangers, our institutions do rely to some degree on luck and the missteps of the evil to finally bring them down. But this is nothing to fret about unless you are only happy with perfect justice. What really matters is to be able to check the excesses of the mighty at some point in time so that the amount of harm they can inflict is limited.

And since crooks never seem to be able to rein in their own excesses (this is my last job -- really!), they inevitably make one too many missteps and go down. It would be nice if they would get cut down earlier and spare us all the pain, but no one really wants to live in Singapore and have every crime small or large always get its due. Freedom has its price, which includes having to put up with inefficiency in ridding ourselves of the bad guys.

[hilzoy]

spartikus: "Does the Plame Affair (assuming it concludes as anticipated) destroy or reinforce your faith in democracy? The latter for obvious reasons. The former because, if it hadn't been for those pesky kids and that mangy dog, they would have gotten away with it.

ie. Is this an example of random chance - a flukish misstep by those in power - or an example of the "inevitability of institutional structure" (or some such) of the American Republic righting a wrong?"

-- I have faith in criminals' tendency to try to get a little too cute a little too often, and in the legal system, and in democracy. But I also think it's a mistake to rely on that faith. Democracy is the rule of the people, and as one of the people in question, I think that it's my job to make it unnecessary for scummy politicians to be taken down by the legal system, by advocating as strongly as I can for their defeat at the polls.

Shorter hilzoy: democracy works if we make it work. That's our job, as citizens.

[dmbeaster]

Wow. I only posted this once -- honest.

[ral]

dmbeaster,

What I tell you three times is true.

(only if it really was an accident :-)

[cleek]

B.t.w., the comments on the article above this are inaccessible.

[hilzoy]

cleek: the server is being odd, but I think I fixed it.

[CaseyL]

The latest round of Bush defenses - "perjury and obstruction of justice aren't really crimes" and "Fitzgerald is an evil moralist who thinks he's on a mission from God" - make me wonder who the target audience is.

I mean, yes, there is Bush's irreducible 30%... but it seems peculiar that the GOP is still pitching to them, since Bush can't still be President after January 2009 (not legally, anyway), and I doubt that 30% is fully transferable to whichever Bush-like mounteback the GOP decides to annoint next.

Meanwhile, though the general public hasn't paid much attention to Plamegate until now (if even now), it has been paying attention to all the other rot and malfeasance the Bush Admin can't hide anymore: the continuing Iraq debacle, the Katrina debacle, the Miers mess, rising oil prices. Because things in general have gone from bad to worse, Plamegate hits the news just when the public is ready to believe the worst.

I'm rather glad the GOP is still hitching its wagon to Bush's scrofulous horse. I want the GOP to be closely identified with the Bush Admin as we go into the 2006 and 2008 elections. It'll be more difficult to monkeywrench election processes if no GOP candidate is polling better than the high 30s.

[Barry]

CaseyL, the rest of the GOP still has a horse in this race, so to speak. If the scandal can be smothered at birth with a wheelbarrow of BS, then Bush will suffer less damage. A less-damaged Bush is a lesser problem for the '06 elections - I'm sure that many Congressmen will run against him, in attempts to save their own skins, but I'm also sure that they'd rather have a Bush who is a positive asset, or at least a net neutral.

And in '08, this will still be an election about Bush. The GOP's major campaign theme will be 'stick with us'. If Bush is a liability by then, the GOP presidential candidate, and all GOP Congressmen, will have to carry him as a liability.

[rcs]

"He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things," one White House ally said, referring to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald."

Are they completely sure the erstwhile ally wasn't referring to GWB?

[DaveL]

Hilzoy: And yet we all know that Bush puts a high value on loyalty.

Bush puts a high value on loyalty to Bush. This in no way implies that there is any obligation to return such loyalty when the loyal retainer becomes a liability rather than an asset. Then they're disposable.

John Thullen: Richard Nixon's Shakespearean (one of the minor Kings) blubbering at his resignation press conference completely ruined my previous ferocious Schadenfreude.

Maybe my earliest memory of anything relating to politics is of being very, very put out at being dragged home from the county fair to listen to Nixon's resignation speech, then bawling about how sad it was. (Forgive me, I was eight.)

[dmbeaster]

ral:

That's funny.

Actually, after posting I got the "website not responding" message. I have learned from past experience that this probably means my post made it. But to get back to the site, I refreshed the page -- twice. The page still did not load, but apparently this caused the post to be resent two more times.

Live and learn.

[hilzoy]

DaveL: that was Mark Kleiman, not me; and I think he was kidding ;)

[ral]

[for lj: This thread, that thread, what's the difference?]

Hasn't anyone else noticed the plot thickening? I always wondered exactly where those forged documents came from.

[DaveL]

I know, but the point is made often enough, and the character flaw is common enough, that it's worth pointing out again, and Gary doesn't seem to be around right now, so I saw my duty and I done it.

The thing that's really sad about GWB is that there isn't even enough substance there to make a plausible cautionary tale. It's just the Nixon Administration replayed as farce.

[Barry]

"Anyone would think, reading their comments (it's findable: it's the latest post on Volokh to do with Plame) that Novak's column was an official White House bulletin, issued as a public service to protect the public from the hidden dangers of nepotistic, crony appointments. "

Posted by: Jesurgislac

Professor Bainbridge has expressed a similar attitude, that perjury and obstruction of justice aren't good enough unless the defendant is also indicted on the original crime.

In the end, it just confirms my belief that 90% of self-declared 'libertarians' are just dishonest Republicans, who found that lying about their beliefs was very useful.

I call it 'deniable Republicanism'.

[cleek]

the rolling-up of Rove, Libby, Cheney, Miller, Novak, Hannah, Bolton, etc.. has spawned a new term: "Katamari Democracy"..

Defective Yeti