Tiger by the Tail
Quite a petulant display our president just put on. Chris Matthews may admire the "fighting tiger" spirit that Bush uncaged once he finished stammering and stumbling through his prepared text, but the very ferocity of Bush's defiance and vocabulary ("show trials," "klieg lights"--as if Pat Leahy were some Stalinist grand inquisitor) suggest that there may be something more to this story, something bigger buried deeper in the weeds. This mini-press conference was the most Nixonian performance of Bush's presidency, and his robotic repetition of the word "reasonable" to characterize his proposal to let Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and others be interviewed in a shady lagoon (not under oath, no transcripts made) could only remind Watergate buffs of the phrase "modified limited hangout". That's what's so strange about this percolatiing scandal. Instead of defusing it, dousing it, sedating it, Bush & co. have amped it up to a mini-Watergate decibel level of confrontation and document spew, complete with a former Watergate cast member. When Dick Cheney famously told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself, he and the rest of the administration clearly never anticipated the day when Leahy would return to powerful chairmanship; I think they internalized Karl Rove's visionary scheme of a permanent Republican majority and thought the future was in the bag. Now they're holding the bag and it's leaking all over their laps.
--
Colin Brace
Amsterdam