What Bush said on the Plame matter is what is important, and Bob Somerby backs me up on this:
Yes, the Bush Admin will torture the language, saying (perhaps correctly) that Rove didn’t “leak classified information.” But over and over, Bush said he wanted people with information to come forward. “I want to know the truth,” he said. And: “We can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would.” But two years went by, and Rove didn’t come forward—or if he did, Bush kept his trap shut. Rove flirted with jail time for Matt Cooper; he may have put Judith Miller in jail. (The Admin will say that Rove signed that blanket waiver.) But the question here seems obvious—and it’s the question libs should be asking. When Bush said he wanted the truth, why didn’t he get the truth from his number-one top adviser? Or did he actually get the truth? Did he actually get the truth, then keep the truth to himself?The words that come out the President's mouth are all that matters to the American people. Showing a videotape of some dork saying some things and looking uncomfortable is not very persuasive if you have no idea who the guy is. Do you remember what Joe Lockhart said about Monica Lewinsky? Yeah, neither does anyone else.
McClellan’s statements are much less important than Bush’s. Two years ago, the sitting president said, “I want to know the truth.” Obvious question for a Bold Leader: Why are we just starting to get the truth two years after this public statement? And: What do you plan to do to the person who kept you in the dark?
3 comments:
Good point, Rod. Much as I appreciated Studio's eloquent editorial on Scotty, it does seem like he has minimal importance on this one.
But lordy is watching Scotty squirm hypnotic. It's like watching Homer on the treadmill.
I agree that the focus should be on Bush himself, but a press secretary twisting in the wind works nicely, too.
Not many people would remember the name of Nixon's press secretary -- Ron Ziegler, for those of you playing at home -- but they do remember the emerging gap between his initial claim that Watergate was just a "third-rate burglary" and what they later found out.
The press secretary is important here because once the press corps feels like they've been punk'd by him, then the gloves are off. And watching the press conferences lately, I'd say the gloves are off.
Only if the people in the press room start grilling the President as hard as they grilled McClellan can we consider the gloves truly off. It seems as if we got a Bush statement that he's standing by Rove, and that satisfied everyone.
But again, if you're watching the press conference briefing and saying to yourself, "Man, I wish I could be watching Ari Fleisher twist like that." You are not part of "mainstream" America.
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