When it comes to the prosecutor purge scandal, there are a variety of important problems in search of a resolution. We have possible crimes, cover-ups, lies, contradictions, trumped up crises, and the systemic politicization of the Justice Department.
But that’s not all. As Jonathan Chait notes today, “I have become rather alarmed at the low quality of the pro-administration spin.” It’s true; the attempts to rationalize this scandal have, well, sucked.
Even if we overlook some of the more routine nonsense — honestly, if I see one more right-wing blog argue that Clinton did the same thing, I’ll tear what’s left of my hair out — Chait emphasizes the fact that the administration has outsourced most of its p.r. defense, leaving it to conservative media outlets that are even less persuasive the White House communications operation.
1. The Weekly Standard believes the scandal isn’t important because those concerned about it are driven by impure motives — congressional Dems, the magazine said, are merely “trying to cripple [Bush’s] ability to govern for the rest of his term.” Dems are conducting an investigation, backed by several Republicans, because they want to push Bush’s approval rating below the low 30s? To block a policy agenda that doesn’t exist? No wonder this hasn’t caught on.
2. The Washington Post editorial page, meanwhile, argued that that Gonzales has found himself in a mess “because he and others in his shop appear to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet know, didn’t need covering.” As Chait noted, if the Post is to be believed, the administration has “told lie after lie for no real reason at all. I suppose it could be true. There may, however, be another explanation. Perhaps William of Occam would have something to say about this.”
3. The Wall Street Journal editorial page conceded that, in theory, it “would be genuine grounds for outrage … if a U.S. attorney were dismissed to interfere with a specific prosecution, or to protect some crony.” However, the editorial continued, while Clinton had done this, “there is no such evidence involving any of the eight Bush attorneys.”
The WSJ’s take, not surprisingly, is the most ridiculous.
I’m afraid the Journal’s editorial board is well beyond reason, but Chait does his best.
No such evidence? How bizarre. There was no evidence that Clinton had done anything like this, unless you consider the Journal’s preternatural suspicion of everything Clinton did to be “evidence.” With Bush, on the other hand, there’s an enormous amount of evidence. So far, we know that New Mexico Republicans called prosecutor David Iglesias before last November’s elections to urge him to indict Democrats on charges of voter fraud. When he refused, the chairman of the New Mexico GOP complained to Karl Rove. Rove, in turn, complained to the Justice Department about Iglesias. And, shortly after that, Iglesias was added to the list of prosecutors to be fired.
On top of that, you have lots of suspicious behavior lurking in the background. There is an e-mail from Gonzales’s chief of staff explicitly judging prosecutors on the basis of whether they are “loyal Bushies.” You have the Justice Department’s shifting stories as to exactly why it had fired the prosecutors. And Rove’s and Harriet Miers’s insistence that their testimony on the matter be given in private–without taking an oath or a transcript, and with a promise of no further follow-up testimony if contradictions arise–is not the sort of behavior you’d expect from people who have nothing to hide.
And, on top of that, you have a lot of pretty suggestive facts. You have the fact that, since the Bush administration came to power, U.S. attorneys have investigated or indicted just 67 Republicans, compared with 298 Democrats. You have a spurious preelection conviction of a Democratic governor’s appointee in Wisconsin that, after the election, was quickly and unanimously overturned by a three-judge panel featuring two Republican appointees. (The “evidence is beyond thin,” declared one judge.) Then there was the fact that the U.S. attorney investigating Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings with Guam was demoted the day after issuing his subpoena, thus halting the investigation.
Chait’s point isn’t just to highlight the seriousness of the scandal — this much is obvious — but to note that the right really needs to pick up its game. This scandal is likely to bring down an Attorney General, at a minimum. Hell, there’s some evidence the president was personally more involved than the administration has let on. Given this, the Weekly Standard, the Post editorial board, and the WSJ editorial board haven’t demonstrated any real spinning skills at all. Their justifications aren’t just easy to debunk, they’re too easy to debunk.
Chait is so concerned about the right’s flack skills that he graciously offers conservatives a defense for the purge scandal that they can embrace for their own use.
Most of this so-called “evidence” of the administration’s guilt comes from the administration itself–specifically, e-mails released by the Justice Department. But the Bush administration is a completely untrustworthy source. Remember the last time it released information that seemed to show a nefarious government conspiracy? That’s right: the Iraq WMD debacle. Why should we trust them now, when they steered us so wrong before? Liberals always say we shouldn’t take information from the Bush administration at face value, but now they want to do just that. Hypocrites!
That’s a good one. I can’t think of a comeback to this at all.