Dropping the Ethical Towel

People are understandably angry that ABC Sports kicked off "Monday Night Football" with one of the Desperate Housewives dropping her towel in the locker room for Philadelphia Eagles star Terrell Owens. The towel, as you may have seen a few dozen times on television, was all she was wearing. (ABC execs apparently snoozed through the whole flap over celebrity boob Janet Jackson and forgot that millions of kids are watching these games.)

But Washington seems to be yawning through an admittedly less sexy episode that, if it involved a Democrat, would have conservative radio hosts turning red with rage.

The Republicans are saying that it's perfectly all right for Tom DeLay to continue as House majority leader if he's under indictment--leaving them vulnerable to charges of naked political manipulation.

Now I suppose you could make a case that any American, including a member of Congress, is innocent until proven guilty. So if a grand jury looking into fundraising shenanigans in Texas happens to bring charges against The Hammer, he could continue as a party leader under a rule change adopted yesterday.

But that didn't seem to be the GOP outlook a decade ago, when they first passed the can't-lead-if-you're-indicted rule as a way of turning the spotlight on Democrats under investigation.

That was then, this is now.

The normally tough-on-crime Republicans don't even deny they're trying to protect DeLay and other leaders from what Texas Rep. Henry Bonilla called a "crackpot district attorney" somewhere. (They're customarily called law-enforcement officials.) I don't recall hearing much from the Republicans about runaway prosecutors unfairly maligning corrupt accountants, bank robbers or welfare cheats.

Will there be a public uproar of "Monday Night Football" proportions? Probably not, unless charges are actually brought against The Hammer (who has been admonished by the House ethics panel more than once this year). After all, more people probably know Terrell Owens than Tom DeLay, and the networks aren't going to give this story the kind of constant airing that actress Nicolette Sheridan got for dropping her towel in front of a very interested Eagle.

"Fresh from election gains earlier this month," says the New York Times, "House Republicans Wednesday approved a change in party rules to prevent their majority leader, Tom DeLay, from having to step down from his leadership position should he be indicted in an investigation in Texas.

"After a debate lasting two and a half hours, the Republicans voted for a new procedure under which the House party leaders would have 30 days to deliberate if one of their colleagues were indicted on a felony charge. At the end of the 30 days, the leaders would decide whether to ask the person under indictment to step aside at least temporarily. . . .

"The Republicans say they want to eliminate the chance for a prosecutor to be able to force Mr. DeLay from his post by obtaining an indictment."

"This is the party of law and order?" asks former Republican Marshall Wittmann in his Bull Moose blog. "This rule change is being done to make certain that the Chief Exterminator Tom DeLay is not removed as Majority Leader if a Texas jury indicts him since it has already thrown the book at three of his political cronies for allegedly laundering campaign contributions. And this is the party of morality opposed to relativism?. . . .

"While the Moose is usually opposed to the politics of personal destruction, he will make an exception for DeLay. He is the poster boy for all that is wrong with our politics - note the impeachment of Clinton that was driven by the Bug Man, DeLay's K Street Project that seeks to purge the lobbying community of Democrats and the Exterminator's support for the toxic mix of money and politics. The Moose suggests that the donkey initiate the Independence Ave. Project to move the Concierge of K Street out of leadership. After all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Back in the late 80's Newt and the boys began their ascension to power by toppling a Texan in the House Leadership - Jim Wright. Let's Wright that wrong by moving the bug man back to Sugarland to remove all pests."

Blogger Mark Kleiman provides a history lesson:

"In 1993, when Dan Rostenkowsi was indicted, the Republicans in the House were looking for a way of pinning his strictly private financial scandal on the other Democrats in the House. Someone had a clever idea: make it a rule of the House Republican Conference that anyone in a leadership position who was indicted would have to step down. So the rule was duly passed.

"Like many of the ideas behind the Gingrich Revolution (remember term limits?), that turns out to be sauce for the goose only. With Tom DeLay facing indictment in the fundraising scandal surrounding the Texamander, the House Republican Conference is expected to rescind the rule tomorrow.

"What should we do about it? Why, we should make them pay.

"The contemporary Republican Party has demonstrated a complete lack of scruple and no sense of limits in either taking power or using power. (The current 'purge' -- their word, not mine -- of the Directorate of Operations at the CIA to rid it of those not personally loyal to GWB is just the latest example.)

"If they keep playing football and we keep playing croquet, guess who's going to keep winning?"

But conservative blogger Amy Ridenour (via InstaPundit) defends the idea:

"It is increasingly common in Washington now for lawmakers and others who disagree with someone to call for -- and obtain -- a criminal investigation of them. . . .

"It is the nature of the beast. The minute an investigation starts, a target's lawyers immediately urge them not to talk to anyone -- and that includes telling the press and allies what one has been accused of, even if the charge is laughably bogus. By the time a subject has been cleared, the matter is old news. Plus, there is a natural reluctance to go public with the news that one ever was investigated in the first place. "When the House GOP caucus originally approved the rule saying a party leader should step down if indicted, I agreed with it. I no longer do. I've seen too much use of the criminal justice system as a political tool here over the last ten years, the vast majority of the cases never receiving media coverage."

If lots of people are really getting indicted without cause, shouldn't the House hold hearings on it, rather than worry about shielding indicted Republican leaders?

Slate's Jack Shafer deconstructs the media coverage of the CIA turmoil:

"The latest such rumble pits the CIA's old guard against its new director, Porter J. Goss, appointed by President George W. Bush two months ago with orders to revamp the agency. Which side is wearing the white hats and which the black depends on which newspaper you read -- or how you read it. If you're a Bush supporter, you think Goss is the hero. You agree with him that the CIA is 'dysfunctional,' incompetent, responsible for intelligence failures, and needs a shake-up. If you're a Democrat, you believe the stories wafting out of the agency about Bush's dark plans to further politicize it, to punish and purge its dissenting voices. . . .

"Coverage of the contest for the CIA's soul has generally favored the CIA's old guard over interloper Goss since he arrived at Langley. Why? Because the Rebel Alliance was talking to the press and the Empire wasn't. Obviously, some rebels figured that Kerry was going to win, which meant they had nothing to lose by dissing Goss, who would be ousted by the new president in January. Goss probably calculated along the same lines: Why start a death match with the CIA bureaucracy until you know you know you've got enough time on the clock to finish it?

"But after Bush won the election, the two sides seemed ready for the showdown. On Saturday, Nov. 13, the New York Times and Washington Post reported the departure of the CIA's No. 2 man, agency veteran John E. McLaughlin, citing anonymous CIA sources who blamed tensions wrought by Goss and his team. The next day, both the Post ('Goss Reportedly Rebuffed Senior Officials at CIA') and the Times ('New Chief Sets Off Turmoil Within the C.I.A.') ran stories in which several anonymous CIA officials crabbed at length about the professional rudeness of Goss and the four staffers he brought with him from Capitol Hill. The only defense of Goss I spotted in a major daily came in a column by David Brooks, a conservative. . . .

"The rebels had several advantages in this war of words: They were already intimate with reporters from the national security beat; many of them understood the art of the leak; and none were above portraying themselves as victims of Bush's political witch-hunt. If they were regular sources for Washington reporters, the rebels had every right to believe they would get a sympathetic hearing.

"Emperor Goss, on the other hand, entered this game with a handicap. He disdains the press, as all Bushies do, and part of what he hates about the old guard is that they leak to the press."

The Bushies occasionally leak to the press too--how do you think reporters found out about Condi's imminent appointment?--but, to our chagrin, not very much.

Lots of journalists, as well as Clintonites, are in Little Rock for that library opening, as the Chicago Tribune reports:

"Oh, has Bill Clinton worked to shape his legacy. . . .

"As tens of thousands of Democrats arrived here on Wednesday to pay homage to the 42nd president--a welcome changing of the subject given their mood over the 2004 election--a tour of the Clinton complex revealed for the first time what kind of time capsule the former president hopes to leave to America and the world.

"While he has already sought to define his place in history, most notably through a 957-page autobiography published earlier this year, the library along the Arkansas River offers a brick-and-mortar view of how Clinton wants to be remembered. Like all presidential libraries, it's a permanent collection that presents political spin for the ages.

"Yes, Monica Lewinsky's name is included, but visitors may have to search to find it. In one section devoted exclusively to the impeachment, the name of the former White House intern appears in small, white print, with little explanation. There is no photograph, no beret and certainly no blue dress."

What, the Smithsonian got it first?

The Washington Times has, shall we say, a less sympathetic take under the heading "Whitewater Whitewashed":

"In his new presidential library that opens today, Bill Clinton defiantly mocks the impeachment proceedings against him, charging that the independent counsel who investigated him had 'a bias against the president' and blaming Republicans for engaging in the 'politics of personal destruction.'

"The former president, in exhibits he approved, repeatedly castigates Newt Gingrich, accusing him of instructing Republicans to label Democrats as 'sick,' and asserts that the former House speaker led a cabal of radical right-wing 'revolutionaries' bent on destroying Mr. Clinton for one reason: 'Because we can.'"

Speaking of Clintonites, Sid Blumenthal excoriates the new administration in Salon:

"Colin Powell's final scene as secretary of state was a poignant but harsh reenactment of his self-delusion and humiliation. The former general held in his head an idea of himself as sacrificing and disciplined. But the good soldier was dismissed at last by his commander in chief as a bad egg. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld regarded him either as useful tool or vain obstructionist. They deployed his reputation as the most popular man in America and the most credible face of the United States for their own ends, and when he contributed an independent view he was isolated and undermined. . . .

"Powell had wanted to stay on for six months of Bush's second term to help shepherd a new Middle East peace process, but the president insisted on his swift resignation. Immediately, Condoleezza Rice was named in his place. She had failed at every important task as national security advisor, pointedly neglecting terrorism before Sept. 11, enthusiastically parroting the false claim that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program (while suppressing contrary intelligence), mismanaging her part of postwar policy so completely that she had to cede it to a deputy, and eviscerating the Middle East "road map."

"But Bush's performance princess was his favorite briefer; ever devoted, the unmarried Rice in an unguarded moment once called Bush 'my husband.' As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was as agile at bureaucratic positioning. Early on she figured out how to align with the neoconservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson to him in blind ambition and loyalty.

"Powell's sack and Rice's promotion are more than examples of behavior punished and rewarded. His fall and her rise signal the purge of the CIA and the State Department -- a neoconservative night of the long knives. Bush's attitude is that of the intimidating loyalty enforcer he was in his father's political campaigns."

Boy, you'd think something far more nefarious was going on than a reelected president picking his second-term team--as when Sid was brought in for Clinton's last four years.

The New Republic's Noam Scheiber ponders whether Gephardt would have done any better against Bush:

"Peter Canellos has an interesting article in the Boston Globe arguing that the GOP benefits from its tendency to nominate battle-tested candidates for president--particularly those who've already run on a national ticket. The logic is that known commodities are much harder to caricature than newcomers.

"My only gripe is that I don't quite see how this applies to George W. Bush. Canellos writes that:

'When a group of swift boat veterans questioned the circumstances behind some of Kerry's war medals, the candidate's favorability plunged nine percentage points in one poll; when former officials came forward to question whether President Bush had fulfilled his National Guard duty, the president's poll numbers held steady.Voters knew Bush; they did not know Kerry. . . . '

"Well, yeah, voters certainly knew Bush. But that's because he was the incumbent president, not because he'd spent a long time on the national stage prior to his first successful campaign. Any incumbent, whether Democrat or Republican, is going to benefit from the fact that voters know him better than his opponent, meaning it's easier for him to define his opponent than vice versa.

"Also, I think Canellos doesn't give nearly enough credit here to the GOP's well-oiled attack machine (Fox News, talk radio, etc.), which is far more effective than anything the left has to offer. Part of the reason Democratic candidates end up getting slimed more often than Republicans has to be that Republicans are just better at sliming. . . .

"Surely Republicans could have found a way to demonize Gephardt, too. Prior to this campaign cycle, after all, Gephardt was known to be every bit the flip-flopper Kerry was. (Gephardt voted against the first Gulf war and was a relative late-comer to the pro-choice cause.)"

Conversely, the well-meaning Gephardt might just have put everyone to sleep.