Shortly after the presidential inauguration in 2001, Dick Cheney vowed, “The days of the so-called war room and the permanent campaign are over.” That, of course, was before the White House was engulfed in scandal.
President Bush’s damage-control handlers are plotting a sophisticated war room offensive to fight back against possible indictments in the CIA leak probe.
Trying to change the subject yesterday, Bush announced a new Federal Reserve chairman and convened his cabinet to signal business as usual at his beleaguered White House. Behind the scenes, however, Team Bush was finalizing its campaign to discredit and undermine special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s conclusions, sources told the Daily News.
The White House strategy is counting on major help from GOP allies and neocon commentators who turned on Bush for naming Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and are now looking for redemption with a miffed President.
Yes, it’s a chance to get the whole gang back together again. “Never mind that Miers unpleasantness,” the president will say, “I’m in real trouble here!”
According to the Daily News, the Bush “war room” has come up with a two-pronged strategy to deal with indictments, if they’re issued: 1) claim that Karl Rove “simply got tripped up” on his recollections of whom he talked to and what he told them about Plame; and 2) cast perjury and obstruction charges as “irrelevant.”
Call it a hunch, but I think they’ll have to do better than this. Kay Bailey Hutchison tried the second of these two ideas over the weekend and has been the subject of ridicule ever since.
Then again, when the White House is caught leaking classified information to cover up lies about a war, and then lying again to cover it up, options are rather limited.