Why This Man Is Smiling
Karl Rove's survival is a boon for the Bush White House.
by Fred Barnes
Weekly Standard - 11/07/2005, Volume 011, Issue 08
IN NOVEMBER 1986, THE Iran-contra scandal broke. The White House announced that proceeds from the secret sale of arms to Iran had gone to the pro-democracy contras in Nicaragua to aid their fight against the Sandinista government. The presidency of Ronald Reagan had more than two years to run, but it was essentially over. Congressional investigations and criminal prosecutions dominated Washington. The following summer, the White House couldn't save Robert Bork, Reagan's Supreme Court nominee. Reagan became a caretaker president.
President Bush hasn't suffered such a dire fate. His presidency, with more than three years left, has a chance to recover, maybe even prosper. True, five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice against Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is a serious problem. But if Libby is the only White House official to be indicted in the case of revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent, the prospects for a Bush political revival will be all the better.
If Karl Rove, Bush's top adviser, had been indicted, that would have produced a crisis. Rove is the most important presidential adviser, the "glue," as a Republican senator said, that holds the White House together on politics and policy. He would have been forced to resign, leaving a huge vacuum on Bush's staff and hampering Bush's effort to recover.
Rove may yet be indicted, but that's unlikely. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent two years investigating the case, called Rove to testify four times before a grand jury, and still had doubts about prosecuting him. Fitzgerald, at his press conference last week, wouldn't discuss the subject. But to indict Rove, he would have to go to a new grand jury and outline the entire case, an arduous and improbable step. So Rove should be safe.
Also, no one in the White House was charged with actually disclosing the name of an undercover CIA agent. That would have given the case an overarching national security dimension. Fitzgerald said merely that the name of a CIA agent, undercover or not, is classified information and shouldn't be revealed. Fitzgerald said he specifically wasn't accusing anyone of outing a secret CIA agent.
Fearing the worst, the White House was relieved at the outcome of the Fitzgerald probe. And Bush, having passed through a gauntlet of troubles last week, emerged weakened but, unlike Reagan, politically alive. In Iraq, the number of deaths of American soldiers reached 2,000. Also, Harriet Miers, named by Bush to the Supreme Court, withdrew her nomination in the face of potentially embarrassing Senate confirmation hearings. And Libby--an honorable man and a patriot, in my view--was indicted.
Instead of "Fitzmas," the leftist nickname for the crippling of the White House through multiple indictments by special prosecutor Fitzgerald, Bush may have experienced the darkness before the dawn last week. Of course, that depends on what he does now.
Short of a Rove indictment, Bush won't be overshadowed by trials and hearings the way Reagan was. The Libby prosecution will draw media attention, but not the massive coverage a criminal case against Rove would. So the White House won't be too distracted.
To revive his presidency, Bush must be bold. Sure, this is a cliché. But with Bush, there's a tendency to get in trouble when he isn't bold. By making only feeble attempts to trim government spending, he angered conservatives and gave Democrats an issue. When he selected Miers, his aim was to avert a confirmation brawl in the Senate. He sought confirmation on the cheap with a little-known nominee. The result was a flawed nomination and a conservative revolt.
Recovery is dependent on Bush's success in reuniting his shattered base. It's a center-right coalition--mostly right. Without conservatives on board, Bush cannot govern effectively. Karlyn Bowman, the polling expert at the American Enterprise Institute, has compiled Bush's approval ratings by three-month periods using Gallup figures. Two years ago, 82 percent of conservatives approved. In the July-to-September quarter of this year, only 69 percent did. Support by Republicans shows a similar decline.
The first step of a Bush comeback is the nomination of a credentialed conservative to the Supreme Court vacancy left by the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor. The Miers detour has left scars. No doubt Bush was furious at being abandoned by conservatives. With a new conservative nominee, however, Bush and conservatives will begin to be reconciled.
The president has an agenda that both he and conservatives agree on. It starts with spending cuts. In Bush's first term, he and Republican congressional leaders paid lip service to holding down spending, but did nothing. Now they are committed to producing real spending reductions.
There's another issue that unites most Republicans, conservative or not. That's tax cuts. Bush is expected to try this fall to make his prior tax cuts permanent, particularly those dropping the tax on capital gains and dividends to 15 percent. Meanwhile, Bush's tax reform commission wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax.
Bush has plenty of political capital left. And there's lots of good news. The economy is humming along at a 3.8 percent growth rate. The spate of hurricanes barely dented the economy. In Iraq, progress on the political side has been dramatic. In a high-turnout election, Iraqis ratified a new constitution. On the military side, the insurgency, while hardly defeated, is declining as Iraqi troops are becoming battle-ready.
And Bush doesn't face the obstacles Reagan did in 1986. He is blessed with Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Reagan faced a Democratic Congress. Reagan was old, tired, and afflicted with both skin and colon cancer. Bush is relatively young and vigorous. When Reagan vetoed a highway spending bill, Republicans joined Democrats in overriding his veto. Bush's political condition is hardly that pathetic. Still, it's bad enough to say there's nowhere to go but up.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard. |
