Earlier in the week, the New York Daily News described the creation of a new White House “war room” to deal with the Plame scandal and the fallout tied to indictments. Specifically, an article described a two-pronged strategy to deal with indictments, if they’re issued: 1) if Rove gets indicted, say he “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.”
I think it’s fair to say both of these points are now “inoperative.” Rove hasn’t been indicted and Kay Bailey Hutchison’s effort to characterize perjury and obstruction charges as “technicalities” became a week-long punch line.
Given what we’ve seen in the last four or so hours, I think there’s a new strategy.
Part 1: Keep smearing Joseph Wilson — Ironically, the same strategy that got the White House in this mess in the first place is still the top priority of the right. Within moments of learning about the indictment, Human Events’ Terry Jeffries was going after Wilson with a vengeance before Wolf Blitzer, to his credit, interrupted him and said it was irrelevant. Unfortunately, an hour later, Orrin Hatch was on doing the same thing. Sooner or later, these guys will realize that Wilson’s credibility isn’t at issue here, but today, apparently, is not that day.
Part 2: Keep working — Bush delivered an extremely brief set of remarks to a camera bank on the South Lawn this afternoon, saying little more than, “I got a job to do.” He then got on Marine One (with Harriet Miers, I might add) for a weekend off. All this accepting resignations from high-ranking indicted aides apparently takes a lot out of a guy.
Part 3: Keep hanging Libby out to dry — The long knives have been out for Libby at the White House for a few weeks now. Today not only rewards those efforts, it makes it easier to do it some more.
A week ago, Rove’s team leaked word that Libby was the one sharing Plame’s name. A few days later, this LA Times piece included a number of White House leaks making Libby out to be border-line obsessed about destroying Wilson — clearly suggesting that the Bush gang has gotten together and decided to throw the guy overboard.
Slate’s John Dickerson makes a compelling case that this is only going to continue.
Scooter who? You may remember how George Bush’s friendship with Enron chairman Ken Lay evaporated when the energy company came under investigation. That looks likely to happen with Scooter Libby. Libby has resigned. Vice President Cheney has vouched for his patriotism and talents. And now the White House will attempt to change the subject.
I can almost hear Scott McClellan now. “Libby’s not our problem anymore,” he’ll say, “because he no longer works in the White House.” In fact, Bush “wasn’t that close with him anyway.” Libby’s significance was exaggerated by “the liberal media.” He may have even donated to Ann Richards in the early ’90s.
Desperate times call for desperate spinning.