The president was in Chicago yesterday for a campaign speech, but those pesky reporters wanted to ruin everything. For some reason, they wanted to hear Bush’s thoughts on the fact that his White House is under a criminal investigation. Go figure.
Bush’s communication staff crafted an interesting rhetorical two-pronged approach for the president. Point one was to decry leaks in general. Point two was to express some concern with the Plame Game in specific.
Point One: “Leaks of classified information are bad things, and we’ve had too many lately in Washington,” Bush said. (Bad things? This guy went to Yale?)
As Josh Marshall put it, this belongs in the “Department of Nice Try.”
Point Two: “[I]f there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush said. “And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”
This is a little more interesting. Obviously, the purpose of this point is to suggest to the public that he’s not happy about the leaks. Fine. But notice he didn’t say he’d personally get to the bottom of this, or that he’s outraged and plans to do everything possible to find who’s responsible, only that he wants to know who it is.
As I suspect Bush knows, it wouldn’t be too tough for him to find out who on his staff was responsible. For whatever reason, he refuses to take any proactive steps to find out.
And on a side note, I loved the phrase “the person will be taken care of.” Reminded me a bit of The Sopranos.