Unable to defend the president’s conduct in the Libby scandal, the White House has embraced the well-established Clinton Misdirection Policy with both arms.
The White House on Thursday made fun of former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for criticizing President Bush’s decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
“I don’t know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it,” presidential spokesman Tony Snow said. […]
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has scheduled hearings Wednesday on Bush’s commutation of Libby’s 2 1/2-year sentence.
“Well, fine, knock himself out,” Snow said of Conyers. “I mean, perfectly happy. And while he’s at it, why doesn’t he look at January 20th, 2001?”
Snow then proceeded to say, “I know you are but what am I,” made some oblique reference to being rubber to reporters’ glue, held his breath for an inordinate amount of time, and then, fingers in ears, shouted, “La la la, I can’t hear you.”
The amazing thing about Snow’s farcical and humiliating performance today is that it concedes defeat. He wasn’t explicit about it, but with repeated references to Clinton’s presidency, Snow effectively admitted that the Bush White House did something spectacularly inappropriate, but justified this conduct by insisting that Clinton was just as bad. So much for “restoring honor and dignity to the Oval Office.”
Asked specifically, “Do two wrongs make a right?” Snow hedged for a moment and then dodged the question.
As for the more substantive point, it’s probably obvious to most of you, but comparing the Libby and Marc Rich stories really doesn’t make a lot of sense. As Al Gore explained this morning:
“Well it’s different because in this case the person involved is charged with activities that involve knowledge of what his superiors in the White House did.
From Dan Froomkin’s clip-and-save piece from Tuesday:
We know, for instance, that Cheney was the first person to tell Libby about Plame’s identity. We know that Cheney told Libby to leak Plame’s identity to the New York Times in an attempt to discredit her husband, who had accused the administration of manipulating prewar intelligence. We know that Cheney wrote talking points that may have encouraged Libby and others to mention Plame to reporters. We know that Cheney once talked to Bush about Libby’s assignment, and got permission from the president for Libby to leak hitherto classified information to the Times.
We don’t know why Libby decided to lie to federal investigators about his role in the leak. But it’s reasonable to conclude — or at least strongly suspect — that he was doing it to protect Cheney, and maybe even Bush.
Why, after all, was special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald so determined to get the truth from Libby and, barring that, to punish him for obstructing justice? Prosecutorial ethics preclude Fitzgerald, a Bush appointee, from answering such questions. But the most likely scenario is that he suspected that it was Cheney who committed the underlying crime — that Cheney instructed Libby to out a CIA agent in his no-holds-barred crusade against a critic.
All of this means that Bush’s decision yesterday to commute Libby’s prison sentence isn’t just a matter of unequal justice. It is also a potentially self-serving and corrupt act.
Was there a quid pro quo at work? Was Libby being repaid for falling on his sword and protecting his bosses from further scrutiny? Alternately, was he being repaid for his defense team’s abrupt decision in mid-trial not to drag Cheney into court, where he would have faced cross-examination by Fitzgerald?
Is this even remotely similar to the Marc Rich controversy? Of course not.
No serious person could make the connection in good faith. It’s an argument made in desperation.