Tom DeFrank, a veteran reporter for the New York Daily News and a frequent commentator on MSNBC’s Hardball, has better access inside the Bush White House than most reporters, and he surveys the scene in today’s “All disquiet on West Wing front” (linked at Raw Story with the title, “A CRESTFALLEN WHITE HOUSE”).
“The staff basically still has an unyielding belief in the wisdom of what they’re doing,” a close Bush confidant said. “They’re talking to people who could help them, but they’re not listening.”
Time and time again in the Bush White House, reality bites them in the ass, but they don’t seem to learn, do they. Take Karl Rove. Tom DeFrank writes:
Much to Bush’s relief, political mastermind Karl Rove is said to be engaged in day-to-day strategy, even though he still could be indicted in the CIA leak case. Some in the White House think Rove is a continuing drain and has also hurt Bush’s recovery by not clearing the reputation of spokesman Scott McClellan, who repeatedly told reporters Rove assured him he had nothing to do with leaking covert agent Valerie Plame’s name, even though it’s now clear he did.
The problem for Bush, advisers admit, is that the ongoing leak probe reinforces allegations that the White House allegedly hyped prewar intelligence to justify a war most Americans no longer support.
So far Team Bush doesn’t know how to separate the two issues, and compounding its woes is the fact that aides aren’t talking to each other as much as they once did.
Gone from the schedule are weekly cholesterol-laden breakfasts at Rove’s home where top Bush hands discussed strategy. Also missing are Sunday “message meetings” with outside thinkers like GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman, campaign pollster Matthew Dowd and superlobbyist Ed Gillespie.
Rove’s woes mount with this CIA Leak Case news, just in 39 minutes ago from Reuters:
A second Time magazine reporter has been asked by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify in the CIA leak investigation, the magazine disclosed in its December 5 issue.
Viveca Novak, who covered the inquiry into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s cover for Time, has been asked to testify under oath about her conversations starting in May 2004 with Robert Luskin, attorney for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, Time said. …
Why Luskin? The Reuters piece doesn’t say, and Luskin wouldn’t comment.
Meanwhile, back at the WH, writes DeFrank, nobody’s tuned in to reality:
A card-carrying member of the Washington GOP establishment with close ties to the White House recently encountered several senior presidential aides at a dinner and came away shaking his head at their “no problems here” mentality.
“There is just no introspection there at all,” he said in exasperation. “It is everybody else’s fault – the press, gutless Republicans on the Hill. They’re still in denial.”
Not ready to throw in the towel and declare the boss a lame duck, the Bushies are hoping two issues can help firm up their base and perhaps make inroads with centrists who voted for Bush: the anticipated confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and a plan to reinforce the border with Mexico to help stop illegal immigration.
This week Bush will begin to press the border security issue, while Alito’s Senate confirmation hearings start early next year. Aides hope those issues will draw attention away from the war and leak probe.
As if. Really, the only thing that’d help Bush now is a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and that’s something that a lot of us have speculated about here. But, it hasn’t happened. At least yet. Why?
The other night, BooMan called me and we chatted for an hour or so. The one thing that BooMan and I can’t figure out about the Bush White House is — even if there were no WMDs in Iraq, as nearly everyone (except Scott Ritter) had expected (or at least a few WMDs) — why didn’t BushCo plant one or two WMDs? Would it be that hard to do? Couldn’t be, could it?
BooMan exclaimed to me, “If they’d just planted one vial of anthrax, that would have helped!” But they didn’t. Why not? Why are they still missing the big picture?
And why aren’t they “creating” alternate realities (such as planting WMDs in Iraq) instead of speechifying about Iraqi troops to an audience of dutiful Navy midshipmen and trotting out jawed-out complex issues like border security?
What fatal flaw is there that prevents them from saving themselves?
