June 15, 2006
Who’s to say what right is
Yesterday Our Fine President’s fondness for teasing his press corp ended with his foot firmly in his mouth as he poked fun at Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten for wearing sunglasses during a cloudy outdoor press conference. Wallsten was wearing his shaded specs because of a degenerative genetic disorder whose effect can be slowed by wearing sunglasses and avoiding bright light.
The President promptly apologized when he found out and reportedly told Wallsten, “I needle you guys out of affection,” but this could not be further from the truth. Our Fine President throws around the ever-so-slightly pejorative nicknames and makes his snide yet chummy comments as a power play. By acting a little pally with the press he’s able to disarm things a bit and change the tone in the room when things are not going his way. That does seem to be most of the time, so that might explain why he is constantly cracking a bit of a joke and then promptly changing the subject, especially when that subject is his integrity and a certain political character assassination orchestrated by his favorite advisor, Karl Rove.
That was the subject of Wallsten’s question, and after accidently poking fun at a blind man, Our Fine President verbally walked away from that man’s question as if he couldn’t hear him either.
“I’ve made the comments I’m going to make about this incident, and I’m going to put this part of the situation behind us and move forward.”
Those were the words of Our Fine President, a man who loves to tout his integrity and principle. Of course its comments he made previously that make it impossible for us to leave this situation in the past because those comments speak directly to whether or not “The Decider” can be taken at his word and trusted with the great responsibility of his job. He once stated that he would hold his administration to a higher ethical standard, that they would do “not only what is legal, but what is right.” He also said, “If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action.” While that last statement was earlier qualified with a comment about how leakers who violated the law would be taken care of, I’m of the belief that his earlier statement about his administration’s above the law integrity comes into play in the administration’s attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson for speaking a truth that discredited evidence cited in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
The whole affair with administration officials Rove and Scooter Libby putting reporters on to the fact that Wilson’s wife was an undercover CIA operative was a misguided attempt at political retribution. Wilson was among the first to punch an undeniable hole in the flimsy argument used to send this nation and our slightly willing coalition to war. His Op-Ed exposing the fact that the administration knew their Nigerian-Iraqi nuclear lovematch was bunk was certainly an embarrassment for the crew. I guess they figured outing his wife might for some reason make people question the reliability of his information, or maybe just question his manhood since his wife was the secret agent and he was just the mild mannered diplomat.
I’m still not certain just what Rove, Libby and assumably Our Fine President hoped to accomplish by publicizing Valerie Plame’s secret double life. But I am certain that while it might be just barely legal for people with this much power to take political revenge on someone in the way they did, it is certainly not right.
Someone needs to ask Our Fine President if he considers himself to be a man of integrity. If he says yes he then needs to be asked how he, as a man of integrity, can reconcile his statement about the high standards to which he holds his administration with the slimy way his people went about refuting Wilson’s statement. Does he consider attempts to subvert unpleasant but irrefutable facts by attacking the character of their source the right thing to do? I’ve always viewed acknowledging mistakes and misdeeds and trying to learn from them to be a better right thing in that situation.