Scandal Overkill?

Laura dodges the bullet!

Newsweek : "Perhaps it's no surprise, therefore, that at least some administration officials -- speaking on background, of course -- have begun retroactively to dismiss Cheney's role. Even if they are rewriting history, the revision is politically significant -- and an ominous sign for Cheney in a city where power is the appearance of power. As an aide now tells it, Cheney's influence began to wane from the start of the second term and effectively came to an end as the Fitzgerald investigation gained momentum in recent months."

Washington Post : "President Bush's descent from the euphoria of an against-the-odds reelection victory one year ago this week to the current reality of a White House in crisis has been as rapid as it has been unexpected."

Chicago Tribune : "One year after President Bush comfortably sealed his re-election and set out to build a Republican majority designed to last well after his second term, the White House is teetering in a precarious balance that party leaders fear could have damaging implications far beyond Washington."

Philadelphia Inquirer : "The Bush administration's rationale for war is now officially on trial . . . If this case is pursued in open court, it could lay bare the inner workings of Cheney's office, where the most powerful vice president in history worked with top aides to marshal pro-war arguments that have since been judged."

Slate's John Dickerson wonders whether Libby can Rally the Right:

"As Bush plays down the scandal, he may be undermined by the kind of conservatives who recently pulled down Harriet Miers, and who may try to lead a more assertive political response. Karl Rove would prefer they stay quiet. He'd like it to become accepted wisdom that since Fitzgerald didn't indict him Friday, he's in the clear. Rove and his allies would like Patrick Fitzgerald's 22-month investigation to become known as the Scooter Libby affair. Cheney, whose natural instinct would be to lash out at the prosecutor, is extremely unlikely to do so, given that the criminal investigation centered around his office is ongoing.

"But will conservatives who revere the vice president and the hawkish worldview Libby was promoting go along? Many are instinctively inclined to rally around Libby the way they did around Oliver North during the Iran-Contra affair. Instead of seeing the evidence of Libby's perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements as efforts to protect his own skin, they'll decry the "criminalization of politics," and frame his actions in a patriotic narrative: Whatever lines Libby may have crossed, he was acting in the service of two noble goals. He was protecting his boss and defending the case for the war against Saddam Hussein. Supporters regard Libby's obsession with refuting Joe Wilson as proper. They see him as merely fighting back against a partisan Democrat who lied about his mission and his findings.

"Whether this line will play with the public the way North's good-soldier act did remains to be seen. Scooter is no Ollie. He's shy and evidently sane and doesn't wear a uniform. He also won't have the public stage of congressional hearings that North did to make his case. But conservatives may cast him in that role anyway."

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle sees a major letdown:

"Well, that was much ado about nothing. I don't really think the indictment of the man who served as the Vice President's Chief of Staff -- and whose role in the administration was in fact much larger than that -- is no big deal. It is. But the way Democrats were talking about this case leading up to the indictment, this has to come as a letdown. After all, liberals believed that Patrick Fitzgerald was going to cripple the Bush administration and reveal the lies and deceptions behind the Iraq war. There was speculation that Fitzgerald would shine a bright, unflattering light onto the inner workings of the White House Iraq Group. There was talk that he was going to name a 'Constitutional officer' -- namely Cheney -- as an unindicted co-conspirator. And there were rumors that he was seeking to empanel a second grand jury to investigate who ginned up the fake 'Niger documents.'

"Maybe Fitzgerald just has a very impressive poker face, but it sure seemed from his press conference that none of those things is now going to happen. Even the talk, earlier in the day, that Rove was now in an excruciating legal limbo seems like it was overblown. The five indictments against Libby appear to be the only indictments Fitzgerald is going to bring. It seems there's a good chance Rove is off the hook and an even better chance that everyone else is, as well."