November 1, 2005
Liberals Foiled Again
By Jack
Kelly
The talking heads on the network news shows Sunday described President
Bush as "weak," the White House as "reeling,"
and his presidency as "beleaguered" after what most
said was the worst week of his presidency.
Mr. Bush
was forced to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers to the
Supreme Court, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff
to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted for lying to a federal
grand jury. But if this is as bad as it gets, the president doesn't
have much to worry about.
Mr. Bush's
job approval ratings have plunged to the lowest level of his presidency
(a level still higher than the low points of his seven immediate
predecessors), chiefly because of the dismay of many conservatives
at the nomination of Ms. Miers, whose judicial philosophy was
known to few beyond the president and the First Lady.
But the nomination
Monday of Samuel Alito, a judicial conservative with sterling
legal credentials, provides a rallying point for both pro-Miers
and anti-Miers conservatives, who will now aim at Democrats the
broadsides they'd been firing at each other.
The Alito
nomination also knocks from the front pages the controversy over
the indictment of Libby. The fever swamp Left had been looking
forward to a "Fitzmas," indictments by Special Prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald that would deprive President Bush of Karl Rove,
his chief political strategist, and would expose a White House
plot to mislead America into the Iraq war. What they got instead
was a "Fitzween" that was more trick than treat. The
Libby indictment is Martha Stewart stuff. Mr. Libby is charged
with having lied about from whom he learned that the wife of Ambassador
Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer.
Mr. Fitzgerald
indicted no one for the crime he supposedly was investigating
for the last two years, whether anyone had deliberately outed
a covert CIA agent. There was no underlying crime, and there was
no conspiracy to cover up what wasn't a crime in the first place.
Mr. Fitzgerald made it plain in his news conference that his prosecution
of Libby would not delve into the conspiracy theories treasured
by the Left.
"This
indictment is not about the war," he said. "This indictment
will not seek to prove the war was justified or unjustified."
I feel sorry for Libby, whose life is ruined whether he beats
the charges or not. But after him, the biggest losers are conspiracy
mongering liberals.
They sent
Fitzgerald out to hunt for bear, but all he bagged was a squirrel.
Journalists were doing their best to paint that squirrel as ferocious.
One noted that Libby is the first serving White House official
to be indicted since the Grant administration. Journalists will
flog it as hard as they can, but this story seems destined to
fade from public consciousness as rapidly as did the indictment
of two Clinton administration Cabinet secretaries.
Quick, who
were they? (Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was acquitted
at trial, and Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, who pled to a
misdemeanor.) The American people apparently agree the Libby indictment
is no big deal.
Only 45 percent
of respondents to a Gallup poll think Libby did something illegal.
And 56 percent think this was an isolated incident, not a sign
of low ethical standards in the Bush administration.
Mr. Bush
mended his fences with conservatives with the Alito nomination.
He'll have a second honeymoon with them if he supports cuts in
federal domestic spending to pay for hurricane relief, and proposes
effective measures against illegal immigration.
The other
drags on the president's popularity are the Iraq war and the economy.
Though it has escaped media attention, the performance of the
Iraqi security forces has been encouraging, and by next summer
the number and experience of those forces should be sufficient
to permit major American troop withdrawals.
The economy
has grown at at least a 3 percent rate for the last 30 months,
a better performance than during the Clinton administration, though
you won't learn that from reading the papers. High gasoline prices
are the principal consumer concern, but these were mostly hurricane
related, and have declined 18 percent since Labor Day.
The poor
liberals. Each time they think they've found the magic bullet
that will destroy the Bush presidency, it misses its target. As
Snidely Whiplash might say: "Curses. Foiled again!"
Jack
Kelly is national security columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
and the Blade of Toledo, Ohio.
