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The New Republic: THAT'S LIFE - Fire Escape by Michelle Cottle (Bush should fire Rove. Here's why he won't.)

THAT'S LIFE
Fire Escape
by Michelle Cottle
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Only at TNR Online | Post date 07.15.05 E-mail this article

[Editor's Note: This article has been corrected.]



his tip just in! White House sources reveal that the wife of top presidential adviser Karl Rove has been discovered to pose a serious national security risk because of massive debts that she has run up over the years--some from her penchant for the ponies, some from her long-standing addiction to oxycontin. As a result, Rove's wife is being placed on the CIA's watch list and will henceforth be barred from air travel, White House events, and any employment that would allow her access to sensitive information about our homeland security.

What Bush administration Deep Throat leaked this juicy bit of raw meat to me? No one. I made it all up. Every last word of it. To the best of my knowledge, Karl's wife is a perfectly lovely woman who wouldn't know a racing form or a prescription painkiller if it loped up and bit her on the backside. But let us say, just for the sake of argument, that all of the above were true. Before you could say "yellow journalism," White House officials would come out swinging, denouncing me for invading the Roves' private life and indulging in character assassination for cheap political purposes. They would have a point--and in times past I might have felt a wee bit guilty about such tabloid tactics. But now, I would simply smile virtuously and protest that I had done absolutely nothing wrong because, well, you see, I never actually revealed her name.

Would such an excuse be pathetic? Intellectually dishonest? Morally indefensible? You bet. But that is precisely the kind of hair-splitting hogwash we are being fed by those currently arguing that Karl Rove himself didn't do anything wrong when he apparently outed Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. After months of denying Rove's involvement in the Valerie Plame affair--dismissing such accusations as downright ridiculous--the White House can no longer deny Porky's status as a leaker. But it doesn't matter, you see, because, as Rove's compadres keep reminding us, he never actually uttered the words "Valerie Plame."





Please. This is the sort of verbal parsing that should make anyone not named Clinton die of shame. Wilson does have, after all, only one wife, and her identity is a matter of public record. This isn't nineteenth-century Utah, for God's sake.

Now, I realize that the law is a slippery business that often turns on seemingly absurd technicalities, and there has been a question all along about whether the Plame outing actually rose to the level of criminal activity. So it is reasonable to expect that Leakmesiter Rove will not suffer any serious legal repercussions for his dirty deeds. What is far more infuriating, however, is that Rove is also likely to avoid any sort of professional blowback--despite the White House's previous vows to deal harshly with anyone discovered to have been involved with this leak. Democrats can scream for blood and dream about "Karl Kanned!" headlines all they want; the smart money says Rove will weather this storm with both his job and his close ties to W. intact.

In part, this is because of Bush's famous loyalty to his friends--an oft-noted point in the media coverage of this matter. There's also the issue of how desperately Bush needs Rove's political cunning if he hopes to enact any of his second-term agenda. But even if he weren't Bush's good buddy, Rove would likely escape unscathed because this White House has consistently shown itself to be completely uninterested in personal accountability--so long as the person in question has been doing the administration's bidding.

Rove is just the latest, most egregious example we've seen. Before that, America watched as the CIA head who screwed up the Iraq WMD intelligence was given a pass--and then a medal. Ditto the geniuses who botched--or rather failed to do any--postwar planning. Meanwhile, the man who helped build the legal foundation for the scandalous abuses at Abu Ghraib got himself bumped up to Attorney General and may soon be on his way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then there's Thomas Scully, the former Medicare chief who reportedly threatened to fire his top actuary if the man dared admit to Congress that the White House was low-balling its cost estimates for the Medicare drug bill. Later asked to investigate the matter, the Government Accountability Office, citing federal law that bars the government from paying the salary of any official who prevents another employee's communication with Congress, ruled that the administration should require Scully (who had since decamped for a private-sector post) to repay half of his previous year's salary. The administration refused, insisting that, in its view, Scully had done nothing improper.

Of course not. Because, in Bushworld, the definitions of such terms as "proper" and "right" and "good" depend entirely upon whether the act in question serves the goals of, and the version of truth propounded by, the administration. At the end of the day, despite all its moral posturing, this White House has a highly fluid, relativistic approach to right and wrong that one typically associates with fuzzy-headed lefties. The main difference seems to be that, for Bushies, the defining philosophy isn't "I'm OK. You're OK," but rather "I'm OK, and if you agree with me then pretty much anything you do is OK too."

Whatever obvious charms this approach may hold for members of Bushworld, this is no way to run a nation. An administration serious about personal accountability and moral absolutes and "doing the right thing" would--as promised--kick Rove's butt. This one is more likely to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Correction: This article originally identified the Government Accountability Office by its former name, the General Accounting Office. We regret the error.

Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at TNR.

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posted by Annamarie at 3:46 PM