Bush Must Fire His Political Architect Karl Rove, Now!

Karl Rove has cultivated a reputation in Washington DC as the stealth operator who orchestrated a series of improbable election victories for George W. Bush. In fact, after his reelection as president last year, Bush publicly thanked Rove for being the architect of his political career. High praise indeed; but that was then….

Karl Rove – longtime political Svengali to President Bush here watching over his protégé like an anxious stage Mom – has become a political piñata for Bush’s political adversaries who are calling for Rove’s head to roll over his involvement in a CIA leak scandal.

Today, Rove is implicated in a political scandal that makes the clumsy Watergate burglars who precipitated President Nixon’s demise seem like smooth operators. And, Democratic and liberal media sharks are in a feeding frenzy to devour his once Delphic reputation that is now floating in the gutters around Washington like political chum. Rove’s fall from grace stems from last week’s revelation that he was the “Deep Throat” who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to a news reporter. And, he has become such a liability to Bush’s political agenda that he – of all people – must appreciate how imperative it is for him to resign or be fired, now.

(Please click here to read background information on this scandal.)

But, notwithstanding the political intrigue surrounding Rove’s comeuppance, the relevant issue is really quite simple: It is whether Bush will honour his word to fire anyone in his Administration who is found to have leaked the identity of a CIA agent – which he himself deemed to be “a very serious matter”? After all, when this scandal broke in the summer of 2003, Bush vowed repeatedly that to do just that. And, his press secretary Scott McClellan affirmed Bush’s vow as follows:

There’s been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the vice president’s office, as well…[I]f anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.

As it happened, in the fall of 2003 when members of the White House press corps queried him about Rove’s involvement, McClellan adamantly dismissed their questions as “ridiculous”. Moreover, when the reporters to whom Rove leaked the information were being threatened with imprisonment for not revealing their source, Rove himself insisted that he was not the person who “named” the CIA operative. (We can now appreciate that this personal denial was intended to emulate Clinton’s infamous “It depends on what the meaning of is is”. Because Rove now admits, rather speciously, that he spoke of the agent but did not reveal her name….Indeed!)

Scott McClellan under siege during his daily briefing on Monday by obstreperous and defiant members of the White House press corps demanding answers to their questions – outraged that McClellan deliberately mislead them about Rove’s involvement in leaking the identify of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Now, after two years of moral indignation and public denials, the White House has resorted to political spin and deflection to fend off charges of covering-up criminal behavior (for example, by citing the special prosecutor’s ongoing investigation as justification for refusing to answer questions concerning Rove’s obvious deception).

Nevertheless, it is patently clear that Rove’s denial cannot be reconciled with evidence to the contrary in email disclosures from the reporter he spoke to; just as President Clinton’s denial (when he protested that “I have never had sex with that woman…”) could not be reconciled with evidence to the contrary on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. Most politically damaging for Bush, however, is that his support for Rove cannot be reconciled with the self-righteous promise he made at his first inaugural to clean up and restore “honour and integrity” to the White House – presumably after Clinton had defiled it with the stains of illicit sex and bold faced lies for eight years.

Adding to the ironic and embarrassing parallels with the Clinton administration is the fact that by allowing Bush and McClellan to defend him in this context, Rove did to them what Clinton did to members of his cabinet by allowing them to all stand before cameras and, like a political choir, defend him against a crime (perjury) that he knew he was guilty of committing.

Under these circumstances, it is untenable for Bush to refuse to fire Rove simply because he has yet to be convicted of a crime. After all, honour and integrity are not sustained merely by avoiding conviction in a court of law.

Instead, to salvage what little is left of his presidential credibility – after, the debacle of WMDs and Iraq, amongst other things – Bush must address the glaring inconsistencies between his words and deeds on this issue. Because no one doubts that if any other White House staffer were found to have leaked this classified information, she would have been fired by now and perhaps also sitting in prison. Therefore, Bush must decide whether he is willing eat his own words and suffer whatever political consequences follow just to save Rove’s job; or, whether he will honour his words by firing Rove and, hopefully, washing this Clintonian stain from his administration.

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