Plamegate and Watergate

This is in response to two postings from "truthdr" on the Washington Post Forum, in italics below.

Yes the White House is essentially open in this investigation and the two are very much unlike the actual Watergate thing. to my knowlege no one has accused Bush of covering up anything, he is letting the investigation continue to find its way. Remember here we have a specific event, the outing of Valerie Plame a CIA agent that is being investigated. but the crimes if any indictments come will be similar, obstructing justice and perjury. No one to my knowledge is accusing Bush to be involved in either. there has been some talk of cheney but from what I hear and read the prosecutor is not going to indict for the outing but for actions of people during the investigation.

Yes, Plamegate and Watergate are two different things. For one, Bush and Nixon are about as different, from a personality perspective, as two people could be, and the White House behaviors are influenced by that. Among the differences is that Bush would never need to be touched by the tracks of a cover-up; this is so clearly a Rove/Cheney pulling-the-strings-on-their-own operation. As for Veep himself, his methods give him plausible deniability; unless a sizable fish decides to cop a plea--which will lead to a whole box of pain--he can't be touched directly (only through actions of his "office", of which we will be told to believe that he remained unaware).

In Dubya's W.H., the dirty tricks are more furtive, more self-aware. From a legal technicality standpoint, more advanced. The basic idea remains the same, though: "Get (in Dubya/Rove's case, "Git") so-and-so. Use the appropriate methods--and don't get caught."

The problem is the "don't get caught" part; Plamegate shows that Watergate is far enough down the river that its basic legal lesson--that the coverup was more punishable, more broadly incriminating, than the crime--has been forgotten in Washington.

One big difference is that the crimes here were crimes of state (relating at least indirectly to national security and war), whereas Watergate's were "just" ones of politics. This very much aligns with the characteristic trait of the Bushite administration, that "everything is politics".

It's time for the purge to begin. I'm OK with the point that, like Nixon, it's become Bush v. world, as the evangelical rats and other right-wing extremists seem to have been as quick as any to jump ship.

We will all be "anti-Bushites" soon, and there are some good results to expect from that. But what we have to be careful about is the fact that anti-Bushism can carry us in so many directions, all improvements but some opposed to one another.

Bush should not have been reelected. Grid lock with Kerry and a Republican Congress would have been better.

One big question is on whom the chickens will roost for their support of Bushism, particularly in 2004. I think the two biggest victims so far appear to be the liberal Republicans (particularly of the N.E.) and John McCain.