On the heels of the administration’s worst week—American military death toll passed the 2,000 plateau, the Harriet Miers withdrawal, and the indictment of “Scooter” Libby---the president simply changed the conversation by nominating U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
By nominating Alito, the president has discovered that the left as well as the right can be unwitting allies in his overarching political need to alter the current conversation.
Without the far right of his party the president would have an approval rating south of Truman in 1952, Nixon in 1974, Carter in 1979, and his father in 1992. Why not throw conservatives the raw the meat they were hoping for?
This is sure to be the “Battle Royal” that pundits have been predicting. And there is good reason for both sides to believe that an Alito confirmation would hang Roe v. Wade in the balance.
Make no mistake, this is a fight that the president needs to take the focus away from the Libby indictment.
Given that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has only indicted a single individual for lying to a grand jury, it remains unclear whether the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent violated the Espionage Act, which have allowed some on the right to conclude that Libby is being indicted for a crime that was not committed.
Beyond its hypocritical nature (see Monica Lewinsky affair) the Libby indictment is but another dagger in the artery of the administration’s credibility.
According to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, 55 percent believed the Libby indictment spoke to broader ethical problems within the administration. And 55 percent, according to a Gallup/CNN poll released this week, consider the four-plus years of the Bush Administration to be a failure that is unlikely to change in the next three years.
With such numbers I would change the conversation too.
The question that has yet to be answered: why would one of the most powerful individuals in the country, who is also an attorney, risk lying to a grand jury in matters that could be so easily refuted---especially if no crime had been committed?
The indictment alone does not necessarily lend itself to a critique of the war and occupation of Iraq, but the credibility of the administration does.
The credibility factor gives greater weight to what former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, described as a “cabal” within the Adminstration headed by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
Even Powell, who has largely remained silent since his departure from the administration, considers his 90-minute UN presentation--that sold the war to a skeptical public--to be a stain on his record.
One of the charter members of the famed “coalition of the willing,” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stated recently that he repeatedly tried to persuade the president against invading Iraq.
The credibility of the administration is further on display, when one considers its recent effort to exempt the CIA from the Senate’s proposed ban on abusive treatment of detainees.
Technically speaking, it is quite possible that no crime has been committed. Why then would “Scooter” Libby risk a prison term by engaging in such rudimentary malfeasance?
Given the difficulty to prove that one has violated the Espionage Act, does not suggest there are no political or immoral ramifications.
The shrewdness of the president to change the conversation in the midst of such political turmoil does not alleviate Congress from its constitutionally mandated responsibility to investigate such matters.
The Faustian bargain between the Republican-led Congress and the president has contributed to the legislative branch failing in its duties to provide oversight.
If Congressional oversight was present when President Clinton lied about his sexual peccadilloes, why the silence in lieu of greater constitutional importance? Truth, as Fitzgerald suggested at his recent press conference, is not only the engine of our judicial system, it is the engine of our democracy.
Could it be that Congress is just as enthusiastic to change the public conversation as the president?
Let the games begin.