Bush rules have also governed the White House response to the outcry over the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The President told the press that he wanted “to get to the bottom” of the leak scandal; his press secretary, Scott McClellan commented, “The President has set…the highest of standards for people in his Administration…If anyone in this administration was involved in [the leak], they would no longer be in this administration.”
Since those comments, we learned that top Administration officials – including key presidential adviser, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney’s chief-of-staff, Scooter Libby – were involved. Yet, no one was punished by the White House.
Moreover, according to a July 24th New York Times story and comments made by political commentator, George Stephanopolous on October 2nd, The President and Vice-President were also engaged in the discussions about Valerie Plame, before her identify was revealed by conservative columnist Bob Novak. (Federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, questioned Bush for 70 minutes on June 24, 2004; at the time, legal observers remarked on how unusual this was and opined that it indicated a suspicion that the Plame leak occurred at a high level in the Administration.)
The hypocrisy of Bush rules might be dismissed as political business-as-usual if it were Richard Nixon who was President; “tricky Dick” was known to be a slippery character, more interested in political gain than in the common good. However, George W. Bush has made a huge issue of his personal integrity.
When he was first nominated to run for President, he made it a point to distinguish his morality from that of Bill Clinton and, by implication, Al Gore.
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