Wrong About Rove?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 7:54 AM

I reported yesterday (and if you missed it, start paying attention!) that the liberal Web site Truthout.org was standing by its claim that Karl Rove had been secretly indicted in the CIA leak case, despite strong denials by the White House aide's lawyer and spokesman.

Why the Rove team would lie about information that, if true, was certain to come out soon was never quite clear. More than three dozen mainstream journalists checked on the Truthout report but could not confirm a word of it.

Now Truthout has backed off, at least partially, from the story by reporter Jason Leopold, who has had some credibility problems in the past (as he acknowledges in a new book) but has also worked for such news outlets as the L.A. Times and Dow Jones.

Marc Ash , the site's founder, writes:

"On Saturday afternoon, May 13, 2006, TruthOut ran a story titled, 'Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators.' The story stated in part that top Bush aide Karl Rove had earlier that day been indicted on the charges set forth in the story's title.

"The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. In moving as quickly as we did, we caused more confusion than clarity. And that was a disservice to our readership and we regret it."

Um, what exactly does that mean? That the story was wrong? That they're not sure whether it was wrong? That it was right but published too soon?

Salon's Tim Grieve put that question to Ash, "and his answer seemed to be a pretty unequivocal no. Although Rove's lawyer and his spokesman have both said that Leopold's story was false, Ash said that Truthout still believes that Patrick Fitzgerald, Karl Rove and Rove lawyer Robert Luskin participated in a 15-hour plea-negotiation session at Patton Boggs last Friday; that Fitzgerald gave Rove's lawyers a copy of an indictment charging Rove with perjury and lying to investigators; and that Fitzgerald told Rove's lawyers that their client had 24 hours -- or 24 business hours -- to get his affairs in order."

Luskin, you may recall, said he was taking his cat to the vet that day.

"So why apologize for the story? Leopold's story quoted 'sources close to the case' who predicted an indictment announcement last week, and Ash told us that Truthout 'hoped and felt strongly' that Fitzgerald would announce Rove's indictment on Friday. That it didn't happen was a cause for concern, Ash said.

"In addition, Ash said that he's uncertain about some of the events leading up to and following the meeting that supposedly happened last Friday at Patton Boggs. Ash said he isn't sure now when the grand jury voted to indict Rove, although he said he remains confident that it did so before last Friday. He said that he isn't sure what's going on now to warrant keeping the alleged indictment under wraps, although he suggested that it must mean that Rove's team is cooperating with Fitzgerald somehow."

Joe's Dartblog rips the original report:

"A new paradigm in yellow journalism: Make a wild assertion on any day, and if ever it come to be true, your reporting is fully affirmed. Anything more egregious than a parking fine on Rove's part, now, will validate the original Truthout story."

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum says someone is headed for a fall:

"I, of course, have no way to judge the truth of either side, although it continues to be strange that Leopold claims to have multiple sources on this story and no other media outlet has even one. In any case, there's damn little wiggle room left here. One side or the other is wrong on a truly spectacular scale and is now set up for an implosion of credibility on a galactic scale."

Talk Left gets a fresh denial from Rove's spokesman, Mark Corallo: "Truthout's claims remain demonstrably false. They are 'utter lies. There is not a shred of truth to them.'"

Jonah Goldberg calls the Truthout statement lame:

"What the hell is that? This strikes me as a new twist on the fake-but-accurate defense, this time using the temporal escape clause. How about something like this:

"On Saturday afternoon, May 20, 2006, National Review ran a story titled, 'New Line of Urine-Powered Hover Cars Comes off Assembly Line.' The story stated in part that such hover cars actually exist and were powered as set forth in the story's title.

"The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. Such hover cars do not yet exist, but we all know it's coming, so it was an understandable case of jumping the gun."

Andrew Sullivan tries to decide whether Rove is brilliant or not so smart:

"My money is on stupid. The right has long sought to portray Karl Rove as a genius; and the paranoid left has been only too happy to go along. My own view is that he's always been a dreadful political strategist. We don't have to wait for a GOP bloodbath this fall to see it. We had a president after 9/11 who could have asked anything of the American public and been supported. He chose a policy of brutal partisan division in war-time, and as commander-in-chief with a strong economy, he turned a 50 percent victory into . . . 51 percent. If he'd risen above petty partisanship, asked for real sacrifice, listened to the military leadership on the war, and included Democrats in a war-cabinet, he could have won in a landslide.

"The domestic policy record is also terrible. By allowing the staggering splurge of spending, especially on the Medicare entitlement, Rove has destroyed the Republicans' advantage on fiscal issues for a generation. By harnessing the GOP to religious fundamentalism, he has all but lost the center and independents; and by relying exclusively on that base, he is also alienating Hispanics on the immigration issue. His decision to ignore Iraq and go for an incoherent social security reform last year was another massive miscalculation. Yes, he can whip up hysteria against already-disliked minorities for short-term gain. But anyone with no scruples or conscience can do that. As for communicating the Bush message: Rove's tenure has been marked by some of the worst p.r. I've yet seen from a White House.

"So, yeah. Rove is a terrible political guru. To sell your soul - and your party's soul - for a permanent majority is one thing. To sell it for 51 percent is just pathetic."

Meanwhile, talk about cold cash: If you're a congressman said by the FBI to have been videotaped taking an envelope stuffed with money, how exactly do you explain that $90,000 was found in your freezer?

"Democrats' plans to make Republican corruption a theme of their election strategy this year have been complicated by accusations of wrongdoing in their own ranks," says the New York Times , "leading the party to try on Monday to blunt the political effects of the unfolding case against Representative William J. Jefferson.

"Democratic leaders sought to distance the party from Mr. Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who has been accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. In doing that, the leaders tried to draw a distinction between the accusations against him and what they said was a much broader pattern among Republicans of trading legislative influence for campaign donations, trips and other perks.

"Mr. Jefferson appeared on Capitol Hill to deny any wrongdoing. Facing a bank of television cameras down the hall from his Congressional office, which was raided by federal agents on Saturday night, Mr. Jefferson said that he would not resign and that he expected to be cleared."

At the same time, both parties questioned "whether the executive branch had violated the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers by carrying out a raid on the official office of a member of Congress." I don't think that argument is going to find much traction with the public.

On the GOP side, is the president no longer an electoral asset?

"President Bush goes to Pennsylvania tomorrow to campaign for embattled Republican House members in the Philadelphia suburbs. But one of the candidates isn't expected to be there," notes the Wall Street Journal .

Mr. Bush "is really doing poorly in our state," says Rep. Curt Weldon, explaining why he won't be on hand and hasn't asked for the president's help. "I've got to win this by myself."

Is "unease" the new "malaise"?

"While hailing the creation of a new democratic government in Iraq as 'a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror,'" says the Chicago Tribune , "President Bush acknowledged Monday that the ongoing war and fear of failure weigh heavily on the mood of the American public.

"'I would say that there's an unease in America now, and the reason why is because we're at war,' Bush said in a long and impassioned response to a question after a speech in Chicago. 'War is more difficult--particularly this kind of war, where it's on our TV screens every day. And I can understand why people are uneasy.'"

War is so difficult, in fact, that even the government's own Voice of America has been forced to close its Baghdad bureau , as I report this morning.

Still lots of immigration debate in the blogosphere. National Review's David Frum , the former Bush speechwriter who broke ranks over the Harriet Miers nomination, says:

"The cat is out of the bag. Pro-enforcement conservatives by now well understand that the president's call for enforcement is a sham - and if the House joins in the sham, it will cost House Republicans votes, not gain them.

"I wondered last week, not very seriously, whether the president did not quietly wish for a Democratic House. Almost surely he does not. But it is true that if the Democrats do gain the House, the stars will align for a huge new amnesty -- and a huge further increase in migration flows, with the very concept of 'legality' fading into meaninglessness.

"I don't know whether any hope remains to save the House GOP. But if it does remain, then the best tactic for survival is for the House to go into outright opposition to the president and the Senate on immigration: drop the pretense of a compromise, frankly acknowledge that a philosophical difference exists, fight and defeat the president's bill - and ask conservatives around the nation to rally to their local Republican candidate for Congress as the best way to send a message to an administration that on this issue has put itself on the wrong side of both its supporters and good judgment."

Matthew Yglesias takes issue with a Republican congressman's rhetoric:

"Jim Sensenbrenner on Face the Nation: people who hire illegal immigrants are '21st century slave masters . . . just as immoral as the 19th century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of.'

"Mark Kilmer at Red State calls it 'a dangerous analogy.' John Podhoretz sees 'insane moral equivalence.' Even John Derbyshire thinks it's 'dumb.'

"But this isn't a new kick for Sensenbrenner. Here he is in March 2006: 'Those who hire large numbers of illegal aliens are the 21st-century slave masters. And in my opinion, that's just as immoral as the 19th-century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of.'

"Has he said it before? Has he even thought for a minute about this analogy? As Jonah Goldberg ('absurd and more than a little depressing') observes, the only way this could begin to make sense is if someone's covered up 'some sweeping historical episode in which millions of Africans snuck into the country for the "opportunity" to be slaves.' Now anyone can say something thoughtless, but as I say Sensenbrenner's used the analogy previously. And he's the House GOP's lead guy on immigration issues."

We all love anecdotal leads in which some average person serves as an example of some larger trend. But the Beyond Borders Blog digs into one recent case:

"The LA Times ran a story about a woman who runs a landscaping business:

"Cyndi Smallwood is looking for a few strong men for her landscaping company. Guys with no fear of a hot sun, who can shovel dirt all day long. She'll pay as much as $34 an hour. She can't find them.

"Maybe potential employees don't know about her tiny Riverside firm. Maybe the problem is Southern California's solid economy and low unemployment rate. Or maybe manual labor is something that many Americans couldn't dream of doing. . . .

"Smallwood is ambivalent on immigration reform, saying demands for immediate citizenship by those who entered the country illegally are offensive. But without a guest worker program, she says, her company probably will not survive. . . .

"Ambivalent on immigration reform?

"Alert Beyond Borders Blog reader Chris Googled Ms. Smallwood, discovering that she is a member of the California Landscape Contractor's Association's Immigration Task Force." Quotes indicating her strong views on the issue follow.

John Hinderaker x

The administration's strategy, as outlined by the Post, is to run mostly on three issues: tax cuts, immigration and national security. The administration is urging Republicans not to run away from Iraq, but rather to emphasize the conflict as a key national security issue:

The Rove-Taylor view is that one-third of Americans agree with liberal Democrats calling for immediate withdrawal and another third support staying the course. The middle third wants a new strategy, but would be leery of pulling out and leaving behind a volatile Iraq, a position strategists believe leaves those voters open to persuasion.

I think that's right. The public's negative view of Iraq is driven mostly by biased press coverage, not the realities on the ground. If Republican candidates run away from the issue, the negative perceptions won't be challenged. If they address Iraq straightforwardly and optimistically, they can erode the superficial negativity on which Democrats rely.

Michelle Malkin is mighty steamed at this dumb Wonkette item, and who can blame her?

" wonkette: OMG I AM WATCHING MICHELLE MALKIN'S INTERNET VIDEOS FOR THE FIRST TIME

"operative: she has internet videos?

"operative: does she do the thing with the ping-pong balls?

"This is hardly the first time liberals have made Asian whore ping-pong ball jokes about me.

"But Wonkette has now mainstreamed it. And I'm sick of it. Are you proud of yourselves? Do you get a bonus from Nick Denton for scraping the bottom of the barrel?"

The offensive Wonkette post is still up there, but with an "update":

"This is not funny. We apologize."

I thought I covered television pretty intensively, but TV Week's Michelle Greppi has a story I would never get:

"Incoming 'Today' co-anchor Meredith Vieira strode confidently onto the NBC stage in a gray pantsuit she said was an expensive loaner from the network, which had asked her to leave the tag in the jacket in case it had to go back. She was joking about how after nine years with the women of ABC's 'The View,' it was either go to 'Today' or go lesbian. But she wasn't joking about the price tag. The Insider peeked at the tag at the party after the NBC presentation. It was $1,950 worth of Armani."