I Get It Now

After being confused yesterday about why it should be such a big political deal about the U.S. Attorneys being fired, I found as good a write-up about the U.S. Attorney flap as I could have asked for can be found at Right Wing Nut House. It comes does to this. Yes, the President, and by extension his advisors Karl Rove, Harriet Meiers, and Alberto Gonzales, did indeed have the power to summarily fire any or all of the U.S. Attorneys.

But later, Congressional leaders asked them about why they did it and rather than just come out and say why they did it, the Bushmen said instead, “These people were fired for performance-related reasons and politics had nothing to do with it.” That’s why things like glowing performance reviews and a swirl of e-mails are relevant, because it demonstrates that the response to the inquiry was dishonest.

To which I say – what a bunch of idiots.

The Bushmen fell for one of the oldest kinds of political power plays there are – inquire about something delicate, and when the mark reacts defensively, investigate the hell out of it. Somewhere along the way, the mark will do something stupid under the pressure, and then you publicize the hell out of that, leaving the original delicate matter to the side as no longer relevant. Suddenly, an innocuous act turns in to Watergate and you’re talking about the #4 or #5 guy in the entire Administration having to step down, and wiping yet more egg off of the President’s face.

It worked with Alexander Hamilton and looks like it’s still working today. Martha Stewart never made an illegal stock trade. Scooter Libby didn’t leak Valerie Plame’s identity. And, come to think of it, as a technical matter it wasn’t getting a blowjob in the Oval Office that got Bill Clinton impeached. All of these people didn’t get hung because of their allegedly bad acts – they got hung because they lied.

What would have been wrong with saying “We fired these political appointees because they weren’t prioritizing their political corruption cases the way we wanted them to”? Nothing. Nothing at all. And we’d still be talking about the war.