Bush's Failing Enrongate Strategy
If President George Bush doesn't learn how to fight back effectively in the Enrongate scandal, his enemies on Capitol Hill will drag out the 10 Enron probes already underway for the rest of his term, with impeachment proceedings commencing next year if Democrats win back the House in November.
Don't believe it? Then ask yourself why the Enrongate non-scandal is still on the front pages of major newspapers across America days after most conservative opinion makers pronounced the story dead due to lack of substance.
Then consider the words of commentator Chris Matthews, the ex-Carter White House aide who advised Dems in his column yesterday to "shoot to kill!" on Enrongate.
It's simple. In the Democrat media machine's headlong rush to torpedo the Bush presidency, the facts just don't matter. Worse still, so far at least, the White House shows little indication that it comprehends any of this.
Bush himself, for instance, complained yesterday that probing Enrongate is "a waste of taxpayers' money." If he really believes that kind of response has prompted anything but knee-slapping Democrat guffaws, stick a fork in the Bush presidency, it's done.
Apparently the Bushies have forgotten this is the same crew that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing bogus rumors their boss once used cocaine, while ignoring a half-dozen eyewitness accounts of Bill Clinton's rampant cocaine abuse.
Bush and his spinmeisters, with the exception of Mary Matalin - who understands the dynamic at work here even if she's not allowed to act on it - just don't get it.
It matters not one whit that there's not so much as a single shred of evidence implicating the Bushies in Erongate wrongdoing. Just like it didn't matter that Bush's father had not presided over "the worst economy in 50 years" in 1992, when the media pounded home that Clinton mantra with daily headlines about a recession that had already ended.
Meanwhile Matalin sat on a treasure trove of evidence against Clinton, the kind of allegations that would eventually get him impeached. When she tried to use it, aides to Bush Sr. nearly had her fired.
The decision to go soft on the Clinton scandals blew up in the Bushies' faces big time just four days before the election, when Democrat prosecutors in the office of Iran-Contra prober Lawrence Walsh indicted Reagan-Bush Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
Of course, the Clinton campaign got a heads up on the indictment so they could ramp up their own scandal attack.
So far in the Enrongate scandal, history seems to be repeating itself.
The toughest GOP response to date has been to invoke Clinton's own dealings with Enron. But does anyone seriously believe that reporters - who didn't give a damn when the ex-prez accepted millions from Red Chinese bagmen in exchange for U.S. nuclear secrets - are going to let relatively small potatoes like that distract them?
The rules are different for Republicans, a lesson the GOP still hasn't learned. Remember John Sunnunu, who the media hounded out of office as Bush Sr.'s chief of staff because he took a government limo to his dentist? Or Reagan National Security Advisor Richard Allen, who had to resign because he'd accepted a pair of cufflinks and a watch?
George W. and his entire administration may be as pure as the driven snow, but after enough Enrongate depositions the Dems are certain to find a similarly innocuous nugget that the press will helpfully portray as Watergate II.
Bet on it.
Unless Bush begins to fight that double standard soon, Enrongate will effectively end his presidency and could hand the White House to Al Gore or Hillary Clinton in 2004.
That's why Bush needs to send a loud and unmistakable message ASAP that Democrats will henceforth be held to the same ethical and legal standards the media routinely invoke to ruin Republicans. And there's no better place to start than with his own Justice Department's probe of Pardongate.
In that scandal, there's no doubt money changed hands and favors were granted, unlike anything to emerge so far in Enrongate. (How many nanoseconds would it take Democrats to impeach and prosecute Bush if he'd pardoned a fugitive billionaire whose ex-wife had ponied up millions?)
Bush's ticket out of Enrongate comes down to this: Unshackle the hands of prosecutors who long ago had enough evidence to win indictments against Bill, Hillary and Roger Clinton for their cash-for-clemency scams.
If Bill and Hill were Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Republican, they would have been hauled before one or both of U.S. Attorney John Comey's two Pardongate grand juries months ago. It's high time that Attorney General Ashcroft instruct Criminal Division Chief Michael Chertoff to tell Comey to do just that, and fast - to send a clear signal to Dems that the no-prosecution pass for their party's leadership has expired.
How would the Democrat media machine react to actual prosecution of Clinton criminality?
Complaints about a set-up by the vast right wing conspiracy certainly won't wash - not with the Dems themselves knee-deep in Enrongate scandal-mongering.
No, the Donkey Party will have two choices. Stop the Enrongate nonsense and accept a ceasefire. Or start a full-blown scandal war.
If they choose war, anyone care to bet which side will have more ammunition?
This is a battle that Republicans, and especially the Bush White House, instinctively doesn't want to fight. That's all very noble - but the war has already started. The GOP just doesn't realize it yet.
If the Dems are the only ones shooting, it's a war Bush will certainly lose.
newsmax.com
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