Tim Russert could have asked Karl Rove anything yesterday on Meet the Press, but for a man who’s built a reputation as a tough interviewer, Russert managed to spend more than 20 minutes with the president’s top political advisor without asking what role Rove played in the Plame Game scandal.
I realize that Rove was on the show as part of his victory lap. The guy crafted the campaign’s strategy, it worked, and he wanted to strut a bit. Fine. But this is the same guy who, just three weeks ago, was called to testify before a federal grand jury as part of an ongoing White House criminal investigation.
Not a single question? Not even a Fox News-like softball along the lines of, “You didn’t have anything to do leaking Valerie Plame’s name, did you?”
I will never, ever understand this. Just 48 hours after Rove’s testimony, Russert devoted over 1,000 words on Meet the Press to discussion of Mary Cheney’s sexual orientation and didn’t even bring up Rove’s grand jury appearance.
We all remember how the media was all-consumed with every manufactured scandal the GOP came up with during the Clinton years (remember “Travelgate”?). But now that federal investigators are looking into an actual felony committed at the White House, the press can’t be bothered to even mention it — even when a central figure in the scandal is sitting, sans lawyers, on Meet the Press.
I’m not going to whine about the Kerry campaign’s strategy, but I wonder how voters who backed Bush in 2000 because they expected him to restore honor to the White House, and backed him again in 2004 because of his alleged “integrity,” would feel if someone bothered to tell them that the White House is under a criminal investigation for outing an undercover CIA agent, who specialized in searching for weapons of mass destruction, to spite her husband. In fact, I’d love to see a poll done that asked if the public has even heard anything about the scandal. What do you suppose the percentage would be? 10%? Lower?
It’s ridiculous. Rove has to wake up every day thanking his lucky stars that this White House criminal scandal managed to go completely unnoticed and continues to be a non-story.