@@ Poetic justice - White House "spin" spins out of control @@
Arash
October 19, 2005
When White House spin spins out of control
Lessons from the special prosecutor’s office
By Howard Fineman
livingpolitics[AT]yahoo.com
Washington -- Live by spin, die by spin. That will be the lesson if Special
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Fitzgerald)
indicts anyone in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_Affair).
Poetic justice is a concept as old as drama, but it applies time and again in the
theater of presidential politics. Traits and tactics that lead to power lead to
overreach, and ruin. In our day, justice is administered (and balance restored) by
law, not by gods. Still, the idea is the same.
You don’t have to reach far back to find examples. Richard Nixon’s rise was made
possible by his calculating, outsider’s mind. He knew how to use fear in the service
of power because he was so full of fear himself. But this perfect instrument for Cold
War and diplomatic realpolitik metastasized into Oval Office paranoia, CREEP and
Watergate.
Bill Clinton’s gift was his rogue charm and ability to convey a sense of empathy. But
his personal story — “The Comeback Kid” who still believed in a town called Hope —
became all too personal when Monica Lewinsky walked through the door. Winsome became
tawdry, charm became mendacity — and Clinton nearly was booted out of office.
George W. Bush rose to power on the strength of a disciplined, aggressive, tightly
focused, leak-proof spin machine — one that took issue positions and stuck to them,
divided the world (including the media) into friends and enemies, and steamrollered
the opposition with ruthless skill while the candidate remained smilingly above the
fray. Sure of his social skills but not of his speaking ability (let alone his
ability to speak extemporaneously), Bush (and Karl Rove) learned to stick to their
bullet-item talking points, to operate through surrogates, all the while steering the
initial course they had set for themselves.
But the machine they built may have run amok — at least that seems to be what
Fitzgerald is examining, as he looks at the leaking of Plame’s identity and of other
classified information.
In essence, the Bush-Rove campaign machine was redeployed in the service of selling
of the Iraq war and, later, in defense of that sale. Did they go over the line in
doing so? We’re about to find out.
In the meantime (and in another twist on the poetic justice them), the very
discipline of the machine itself — its short internal supply lines, the consistently
followed talking points, the focus on feeding friends and obliterating enemies —
could be helping Fitzgerald. Tightly knit groups rise together, but they fall
together. If the inner circle is small, it takes only one insider “flip” to endanger
the rest.
The campaign sales structure for the political runup to the war was clear from the
start. White House Chief of Staff Andy Card
(http://www.nndb.com/people/646/000024574) talked openly about new-car style
“rollouts” in the fall of 2002; it soon became well-known that, among those in the
so-called “White House Iraq Group” — WHIG for short
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=White_House_Iraq_Group) — were campaign
honchos such as Karl Rove, Karen Hughes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Hughes),
Ari Fleischer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Fleischer) and Mary Matalin
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Matalin).
People have long since gotten used to the idea of Karl Rove in the White House. But,
the fact is, in 2001, his presence was something novel. He was the first modern-era
consultant with an office in the West Wing.
And there he was in the WHIG, along with several of the heaviest hitters of
substantive foreign policy, including Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Irv Lewis
“Scooter” Libby (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/libby/libby.php), then-National
Security Advisor Condi Rice and her deputy, Steve Hadley
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/hadley/hadley.php).
What, if any, classified information was floating around at WHIG meetings? What, if
any, of it was “put out”, as they say, or used in other ways? What, if any, info
might some of the more enthusiastic WHIG members have tried to cadge on the side,
perhaps for their own somewhat freelance use? Who leaked what to whom among the Judy
Miller types in the national media?
These questions were not asked for the most part at the time, either by the media or
the Democrats who now oppose the war. But in American politics we tend to replay
every cataclysmic political issue in the courts: Nixon’s reelection in 1972 in
Watergate, Clinton’s in 1996 in Monica Madness.
Now comes — again — the war in Iraq and, by extension, the reelection of the
self-described “war president”.
Will Fitzgerald indict anyone? Well-placed insiders, including two I’ve talked to in
the last two days, think that he will. And then the gods, or rather the law, will
begin to speak.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9751606
Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/f8a438a900ef766e?hl=en
Secrets, Evasions and Classified Reports
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/e9da14f43b85eeba?hl=en
Lewis Libby possibly sought out reporters in CIA leak
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/cb23692845e9d2d0?hl=en
WHIG: Not Even a Radar Blip
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/7dc4256b2c28b0b6?hl=en
U.S. set up front group to market war in Iraq in 2002
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/dc3f7b9008c828d2?hl=en
The Exorcism of the New York Times
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/4bb62103d6c6f358?hl=en
Larry Franklin-Plame connection
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/cbc77a30a4b0072f?hl=en