Note to self: If I'm ever a high government official and under investigation, I want a rabid partisan on my trail.
What I don't want is Patrick Fitzgerald.
The GOP talking points had two themes before Fitzgerald sent his first (and, perhaps, only) salvo Friday: That Fitzpatrick was a partisan and that whatever charges Fitzpatrick filed would be mere technical crimes.
Then Friday Fitzpatrick demolished both arguments in one masterful performance.
This White House, as Lewis Gould notes in today's Washington Post, knows how to campaign in office. And a fundamental tenet of any campaigning is to define your opponent before they can define themself. Hence the sub-rosa campaign to (S)tar(r) Fitz.
And he was a tempting target, having been a silent, behind-the-scenes, figure for months. But Friday's appearance turned out to be a star turn rather rather than a Starr turn. Instead of a wild-eyed or weird partisan, he hit a perfect note of being the relentless straight-arrow.
As the Post's Dana Milbank put it:
Fitzie, as some pals call him, came straight from prosecutorial central casting: He spoke with a street-tough Brooklyn accent and laid out his case with the matter-of-fact assurance of a police captain explaining how his officers gained entrance to the premises and apprehended the suspect.
Seldom glancing at notes and eschewing stage makeup, Fitzgerald expressed amusement with the attention he's getting ("I think someone interviewed the person who shined my shoes the other day") and a fierce determination to stay within what he called the "four corners of the indictment." Asked to compare his probe with that of Watergate or the Monica Lewinsky matter, he replied: "I don't even know how to answer that. I'm just going to take a dive."
And while wiping out the "partisan" label, Fitzgerald methodically dismantled the “poor memory” defense, refuting the notion that Libby's alleged crimes were the result of a mental slip-up or an innocent mistake: Either Libby lied or three reporters and a greater number administration officials lied. Which seems more likely?