Remember Karen Hughes? In addition to her political duties for the President, she also gave life to a rhetorical tic that thrives in the Bush Administration into its second term. It all began with transition verbiage:
"This President honors the values of his office."
And it has continued. This President. This White House. This Administration.
The implication wasn't subtle. What came before - the Clintons, the President's all-too-soft father - was an aberration. We're in charge. We do things right. We wear ties in the Oval. We're better, with a call to a higher morality, a greater calling ordained by the lord.
And so when Karl Rove slandered terror-tested New Yorkers before the tiny and dying state conservative party a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't surprising to see that Hughes tic show up: " ... this President and today's conservative movement are shaping history, not trying to stop it."
That, of course, was the infamous speech that began Rove's career-ending slide into ignominy and ridicule. It didn't have anything to do, per se, with his despicable and un-American outing of an undercover CIA agent - admitted by his lawyer this week - but the speech did reveal the true measure of the man....and of this Administration. A snippet is needed, though widely distributed already:
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to… submit a petition.
Those words were the prism that finally put Rove's evil outing of Valerie Plame into just the right light; they served as the big magnifying lens that turned the sun's warm rays into a hot laser beam that has the pile of White House leaves a'smolderin' tonight.
President Bush vowed to fire the Plame leaker. Rove's lawyer, prompted by emails released by a Time reporter under threat of being jailed by the special prosecutor, has admitted to his client's culpability - clinging as he is with cracked, aching fingernails to the legal distinction of whether Rove "knowingly" revealed Plame's identity to syndicated scum-scraper Robert Novak. Republican Senators are getting slippery nervous. GOP talking points defending Rove appear weak. Scott McLellan is tripping over his own tonsils. Even the Freepers are freaked.
Surely, a traitorous political hack job during a time of war, an attack against a covert operative in harm's way, will not be tolerated in this White House, by this Administration.
Surely, as Karen Hughes always suggested, this President will be true to his word.
