Love the Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarth metaphor.  You're a wit, Marshall.  Best, Ovid

Ironically, in this instance he was divulging the truth.

UGH...

he was NOT divulging the truth. He was lying. Plame did NOT send Wilson to Niger. And that was his major point. The truth, that Plame was Wilson's wife and Plame worked at the CIA, that is just set up for more "gossip, innuendo and rumor to destroy his enemies"

Character doesn't count!

You're right! Let's all pack up and go!

No one thought Bolton would not get confirmed either. And winning's not really the point. The point is that as long as this is the story and we're discussing it, Bush bleeds, we feed.

If Bush insists on standing by his man and not holding anyone accountable, we at least owe it to history to make him pay a political price for it. Win or lose, being on the right side of this only helps us. 

We are not better off with Rove not getting fired, at least not if we identify ourselves as  Americans first and Democrats second. Rove outed a CIA agent working on WMD to hurt a political opponent. He is still in a position where he has access to classified information. This is bad.
For the same reason, though, I disagree with Marshall's 'don't get too excited' point. This administration's great selling point, for reasons that are lost on me, is that they are supposed to be strong on national security. This episode is pretty hard to square with that.
For me, the only relevance that the question, did Rove violate the law? has is that it makes it more likely that Bush will have to fire him. The real stories, to me, are: first, that Rove was willing to compromise national security to score a political point, and second, that two years after the story broke, and (now) about ten days since Rove was named as the leaker, Bush has done absolutely nothing in response.

You're absolutely right. Unless Rove is indicted or is somehow tagged as an unindicted co-conspirator, he'll ride this out. What's anybody going to do to him? Congress won't do anything. How is the press going to really hurt him? And do you really think the American public -- the same one that thinks Saddam and Osama planned 9-11 together and which doesn't seem to give a shit about torture -- really is following this closely enough to understand what's going on. Please.

Excellent point.  Also, ironically, the White House probably needs Karl Rove to figure out how to spin and deal with the issues surrounding his own scandal.

-prontopup (http://www.prontopup.modblog.com)

As I wrote in my blog this morning, for Bush to get rid of Rove, would be like Charlie McCarthy firing Edgar Bergen.

Good line.  I do have a concern in the way this is being discussed, though.  It's not about getting Rove.  This isn't Kill Bill Volume 3.  Disclosure of classified information is serious business.

How is Rove different from Aldrich Ames?  Ames sold the names of US agents for personal gain, while Rove sold Plame, and the network she created for political gain.

For Bush to leave Rove in place he'd have to believe that it's okay to play games with national security as long as it benefits the Republican party.

While I greatly appreciate the perspective you bring, Mr. Whitman, your post suggests to me a lingering loyalty to the land from which you came.  I agree with the earlier post that you are dead wrong about the truth of what Rove put forward--the evidence is clear that Plame did not set up this trip for Wilson, and the notion of a political boondoggle involving an exciting trip to a destitute country for what must have been low pay is absurd on the face.  I am sure there is beauty to be found in Niger, but it is no Club Med destination.

 Moreover, while Rove may well be indispensable, that bolsters the point of why the dems need to go forth will full fury on this.  Bush may very well hold onto Rove, but this is very different qualitatively than the situation with Monica Lewinsky and Clinton, to put up a contrasting example.  Clinton was at that point a president with strong job ratings (if not character approval), and so many Americans had experience with personal failings and affairs they could see through the hypocrisy to the essential political core of the attack on Clinton.  In this case, national security was compromised, and no amount of spinning (Plame sat at a desk! Wilson was wrong! This was just politics!) can alter that view.  Moreover, unlike Clinton, job approval ratings for W are headed deep, deep into the toilet. 

If yesterday's press conference is any indicator, there are many formerly cowed members of the MSM who will be all to happy to pull the flush handle.   

I agree that it is good for Rove to stay around well into next years election cycle.  If it were a solitary scandal it wouldn't be so powerful, but combined with all the lies about WMD and everything else, along with Delay's many ethical problems, the Duke-stir and the many other Republican scandals in Kentucky and Ohio, etc, there is a clear pattern.  The democrats need to name and reiterate it continually.

We need to tag the Republicans the way they tagged us with "tax and spend" incessantly, so that every individual news item resonates as another tip of the "dirty tricks" (or some such tagline) iceberg.

We need a tagline.  Something that says Republican Arrogance/Dishonest/Manipulation/Currpution.  It will stick because it will represent a fundamental truth.  Then it will be like when you buy a new car, you suddenly see that make of car everywhere.

The Rove story perfectly epitomizes the fundamental faults of the Republicans in power.   It includes

• Lying (the initial untruth about WMD, lies about Wilson being sent by his wife, the ongoing/growing WHite House coverup about the scandal -- just like lies about so many other subjects)
• Dirty Tricks (the good old Bush family campaign shananigans, from Lee Atwater's treatment of Dukakis, to Rove's treatment of McCain, and smearing of Kerry's war record, and hiding W's past drug use, drunk driving and military service)
• Politicization of Terrorism (revealing Plame compromised our national security, and this reveals truth that administration doesn't fundamentally care about terrorism, although it uses this issue for political gain, self-aggrandizement of corporate buddies, and justification for failed Iraq policy.)
  

You wrote ... "Unfortunately, the bigger question is if the Demo's has a messanger who can keep the message on focus, and that I don't see with the current players."
 
Actually, we do have one messenger with the squeaky-clean persona of a patriot and the credentials of a commander, and he could attack the Bush administration with take-the-high-road credibility, focusing on both their failure of moral clarity and carelessness in national security matters as indicated by the Plame affair. He could be indignant without seeming partisan.

That person is Wes Clark.

Yep. And not only is Clark clearly patriotic, good on security, good on other policy stuff as well, and incredibly smart, he can also talk about values with the kind of confidence you get from actually taking them seriously. And because he takes them seriously -- not as a club to hit other people over the head with, but as something to measure your own self by, and try to live up to -- he's completely clear that moral issues are not about e.g. gay marriage, but about responsibility and decency. And that's an insight Democrats badly need to reclaim.

The X factor here is still Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation.  Despite all of the big confirmations of the last few days, we still only know what we know. We don't, however, know everything that Fitzgerald knows.  For instance, Bob Novak said "two senior administration officials".  Who's the second guy?

I think Rove's (and possibly others) indictment is exactly where Fitzgerald is headed. If memory serves, he's Jesuit trained and he's also too good a prosecutor to waste time, effort and political capital on a dog that won't hunt.  

I wish someone would connect the dots:  discrediting of Wilson/outing of Valerie Plame to the "fixing" of intelligence in the Downing Street Memos to the illegal war which has caused the death of thousands.  It's all related, folks. 

Please, God, make Bush keep Rove right where he is.

You want to know what the most ironic part of 2006 will be?  When the Republicans become the party of Withdrawl from Iraq.  The Brits already have the memo. 

Yet again, the Democratic Party will be left confused and unprepared as the Republicans take the initiative in direct response to their polling numbers. 

I think Tom Friedman was partially right.  Plenty of Democrats have great ideas, but the Democratic Party seems fresh out. 

I actually suggested that Rove was laying groundwork for the Plame scandal with his comments about liberals and terror back when he made the comments. Like you, I suggested he was trying to shore up GOP support for him.

But he's not the only one who made such outrageous statements in the last few weeks. Dick Cheney also did so, with his increasingly ridiculous "last throes" comment.

That's significant because Cheney is implicated in this too (through Libby, who we know ALSO talked to Cooper). And Joe Wilson got reports that there was some real animosity between Rove and Libby/Cheney back when it became clear that this would bring legal troubles.

In other words, it may not just be a question of how Rove responds. It may be a question of whether Rove and Libby/Cheney try to take each other out. I strongly suspect they're already trying to place blame on the other to avoid any implication themselves.

 For example, in Isikoff's article first revealing Rove was Cooper's source, he quotes two lawyers "sympathetic to the White House," one of whom admits the White House is worried that Rove will be indicted. Why would a White House lawyer do this? It only serves to make it harder for Karl to prove his innocence if it looks like the White House is admitting the real possibility that he will be indicted. One possibility (there are others) is that the White House sympathetic lawyer is actually the lawyer for Libby or Cheney, and said lawyer is trying to take Rove down, thereby making things easier on his own client.

Obviously, we don't know where Fitzgerald is going with this, beyond the fact that Novak had two sources and that Karl likely didn't have direct access to Plame's identity. I'm increasingly convinced, though, that Fitz is after more than one WH official. And that they're currently beginning to go after in a fit of self-preservation.

What is amusing is that so far, Cheney/Libby are winning the PR war on this, not "the master" Rove. 

<span class="Apple-style-span">Karl Rove, the president's Weapon of Mass Deception, will commit treason in order to justify a war based on lies.</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">
</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">What's at issue now, isn't whether the Fitzgerald investigation will get Rove seriously sanctioned, but whether it will make it possible for others to begin revealing all of Rove's other smooth and not so smooth moves.</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">
</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">Rove and Ohio is a topic I believe contains a lot of food for thought and newspaper space.</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">Rove and his dealings with McCain is likewise something we'd like to have the details on.</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">And what of Karl's link to the Swift Boat Veterans for Lying Your Ass of to smear a War veteran? Another very interesting topic of discussion.</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">
</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">Karl Rove's shtick is up.</span&gt

I have two recommendations on how we as citizens need to respond to the Rove as Plame Leaker story.

First - when referring to Rove as leaker, NEVER call him "THE leaker", always say "ONE OF the leakers".  We've known from the beginning that there were at least two White House insiders shopping this story all over the MSM, so let's not allow it to turn into exclusively a Rove story.  This was a coordinated, deliberate policy of the Bush administration as a whole.

And second, it's time to start asking, and asking, and asking - why the ten week gap between the CIA sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department asking for an investigation into this leak (which happened the day after the Novak column appeared) and the Justice Department and the White House actually launching an investigation?  This can't be a 'lost in the mail' scenario, since the CIA sent NUMEROUS requests and reports to Justice about the matter.  And yet no action was taken until the fact that no action was being taken became a front page story in the Washington Post.

I want to see that gap brought up in the White House press room the very next time McLellan makes that smarmy boilerplate lie about how 'no one wants to get to the bottom of this more than the president'!

Start using the term 'coverup', because that's exactly what this White House did about a request FROM THE CIA to investigate a felony committed by its own staff!

 And please, let's stop whining about the fact that the president is not going to fire Karl Rove.  Come on, if he did, and that was the entire outcome of Plamegate, would anyone consider that a victory?!  This was not just Rove, this was the entire upper echelons of the Bush administration - we all know it, and it's up to the prosecutor and the media to prove it.  We can't lean on the prosecutor, but we can certainly 'provide feedback' to the media. 

So let's do it.

If George Bush is who he seems to be - good as well as bad -  it's hard to believe that he won't do everything he can to keep Rove around.  As an American, this distresses me.  As a partisan opposed to the politcs the Bush Administration represents, I'm not unhappy to see them stick with Rove, because I think it cannot bode well for them.  I just don't see this story going away, and I think there are a lot of Americans who may not speak out much who will be alienated by the President's support for someone who has done something that so clearly undermines national security.  So if Rove leaves the White House with a jacket over his head, justice will be done now.  I think if he doesn't, it'll be done later on.

Rove is to become a symbol, an albatross around this Administrations neck for all the swing voters out there wondering where this Administrations --- and indeed the Republican parties loyalties lie.

Bush is incapable of making difficult decisions, to change course when clearly a change in course is required.

Bush's loyalty and steadfastness are a weakness when he is  unwilling or unable to recognize failure and poor judgement and make corrections.

These are not the signs of a leader. 

While I agree that Bush would/could never 'fire' Rove, the other possibility is that Rove removes himself from the administration, if it's the most politically opportune move.  That could mean "lay low for a while" then come back as the head of the GOP (*shudder*), or immediately moving to some other position to operate from that did not have direct links to the Pres. but is only a phone call away.

 Rove is a supercomputer of how to spin and what angle to take politically.  And so I expect that he will adapt to circumstances, and that could include stepping off of Pennsylvania Ave (...I worry about a Kenobi parallel here, 'if you strike me down, you will only make me stronger', he's just the roach to survive any contingency).

But as a theoretical, I'd like to see a discussion about how a Bush White House without Rove would operate.  Where Karen Hughes had more influence; would Cheney have more power?  Are Dick and Karl generally in synch, or does Rove actually balance out Cheney's wilder impulses (we know from the press quotes he loves to give that he's happy to shoot his mouth off on old propaganda chestnuts that have long ago been proven false). 

So any thoughts folks, on how a Rove void would be filled?  A less effective White House?  A less subtle administration?  Some new puppetmaster putting W on his lap?

She can't be allowed to testify.  She knows too much other stuff.

I've seen a lot of commentators I respect repeat the line that Rove was "divulging the truth," as Marshall Wittmann puts it. 

Of course, who recommended Wilson for the mission to Nigeria is irrelevant to the fact that Wilson's editorial was accurate and the President's State of the Union address was misleading, and possibly an outright lie.  Remember that in response to pressure the White House ultimately backed away from those fourteen words. 

But given this obvious irrelevance of Plame's identity to the whole yellowcake issue--Wittmann's assertion notwithstanding--I haven't seen anyone discuss what Rove was actually trying to accomplish, leaking the way he did.  Did he even think he was "divulging" info that could be taken as a relevant truth?  Or is it clear from the pattern of leaking that he was up to something else?

Its clear that Rove along with other senior administration officials spread Plame's identity around to multiple reporters, journalists and opinion columnists, only one of whom--Novak--ran with it. 

I think this pattern suggests that Rove did not intend for the journalists to write up the information as the "truth" about Wilson. 

Rove's intention was to make it appear that further revelations about Wilson's credibility were on the horizon in order to stall reporters' coverage until the story blew over, and make them cautious about giving credence to anything Wilson said in the meantime.  What Cooper's e-mail indicates is that Rove implied the story wasn't settled yet, and that if _Time_ wanted to run with it they might be faced with embarassing revelations about Wilson's credibility--revelations unspecified by Rove in the conversation where he leaked Plame's identity, but only hinted at in his warning to "not get too far out" on the story.  Of course, there were no such revelations forthcoming, but Rove was only trying to take the legs out from under the issue.  And if you think that Rove wouldn't do a thing like this because he wouldn't want to undercut his credibility with reporters that are his regular contacts, keep in mind that Wilson's editorial was an important moment for this White House--the first crack in the facade.  They had a lot to lose.

So the White House plan was this: put a little fear in the reporters on Monday, have Novak's story reliably appear in the few days afterward, confirming their earlier caution, and thereby ride out the news cycle.

So contrary to assertions by people like Wittmann that Rove was "divulging the truth," Rove didn't intend for journalists to print the info.  He didn't believe the the nepotism accusation had legs.  He wanted to create a climate of caution around the issue in the press corps in order to buy the administration some leverage.

Wittmann and others who repeat the canard that Rove was right are defending a "truth" that not even Rove thought was relevant enough to report, much less true.

Right now Karl Rove is going to have his hands full covering up this mess.  As long as he stays in The WH, the stench stays with him - hopefully right up until the midterm election.

If he leaves the White House...remember that line from Star Wars - You can't win.  If you strike me down I'll grow more powerful, yadda yadda yadda?

Do we really want Rove free to focus on the Florida Senatorial race?  Or, Maryland?  Or, anywhere else?  Let him stick around for another year, get the stench good and ingrained.  Let us run ads with his face and treason underneath.  DeLay's face and corruption underneath.  And, our opponents faces and "Trust?" underneath.

It may not be Rove.  The target of the investigation might be Libby or Cheney, and if so the misdirection and "slips of the tongue" by Rove's lawyer would be designed to draw all the heat to Rove.  Then when Cheny is indicated, the Radicals can say, well, we went through this once and everything the Democrats said was a lie.

sPh 

The graveyard is full of indispensible men.

~~Can't remember the source 

Stalin is the one I remember being attributed to the quote.

Yep.  Karl Rove probably doesn't want to quit, but they could put him on a leave of absence, give him a low profile.  He could be paid off handsomely, even though he loves to be the spider at the center of the web. 

The Fear Factor.

Rove is the maestro of Republican dirty deeds and as such he must have the goods on a lot of senior administration officials, especially George Bush.

If he thought this administration was going to hang him out to dry, can anyone even imagine that he would take that laying down?

I don't know if I totally agree - the 'values armor' of the Republican party certainly dates further back than that, from the conservative movement's lurch to the right from the 60's or at least in the run-up to the 1994 elections. Let's not forget that for all the 'genius' of Karl Rove, he managed to lose George Bush's first presidential election, and just barely squeaked by in the second - his power to characterise the parties has not been very successful outside the chattering class and his successes I think are more readily attributable to: i) Republicans' thirst for unmitigated power after being denied that for virtually a century, ii) the translation of that thirst for absolute power into a very effective political machine, especially on election days.

The American liberal agenda has had such spectacular success in our country's history, we were due for an adverse swing of the pendulum and I think we're just living through one of those. People will get sick of it soon enough and, when they want things to actually get done, liberals will come back into office.

Two related points:

1) Rove is done. The end will come when GOP senators turn against him (and some will).

2) Evidence that Rove is done is that the White House has no prepared response to the news. It's not as if they didn't know this was coming.

Guys, this all really quite simple, as some of you have already said: the issue ain't whether Rove stays or goes, it's the hay we make out of it if we're not too wussy to fight. Congresional dems should be hitting the chamber floors yelling to the the roof tops "This is tresonous! It is a disgrace that this man still sits at the center of power. How dare this man compromise our nations security in order to make cheap political points! George Bush's father would never stand for such duplicity! Outing our nation's intelligence assets cannot be allowed to become nothing more than tawdry cocktail party chatter, and any republicans who dare defend this dispicable man should be ashamed of themselves!" Well, you get the picture... be relentless for a change for gods sake 

The stench of Republican hypocrisy hangs heavy in the air.  Whether Rove acted with criminal intent or "merely" reckless disregard for national security, he should be out.  No one can make a credible case for that traitor to be within a mile of classified information or anyone with access to classified information.  But the downward spiral will continue because the Republican barrel has no bottom.

The graveyard is full of indispensible men.

~~Can't remember the source

Charles de Gaulle.