Apologies to anyone who's stopped by for the absence of posts here. Life, as it sometimes does, intervened unanticipated. I hope to start posting at my regular, irregular rate again tomorrow or Friday.
A question in the interim: If, as I suspect will be the case, the White House is completely exculpated in the "Plame/Wilson Affair", will those whose lives have been suddenly brightened (or, at least, energized) by the "affair's" existence:
(a) apologize for their hasty overreactions ("never mind....");
(b) claim it as evidence that the conspiracy is escalating; or
(c) other (and please let me know what "other" might be).
Thanks for your thoughts, if any.
Update: Daniel Drezner commenter Robert Modean and InstaPundit commenter Richard Aubrey each come pretty close to my educated guess on this matter. Excerpts of their comments:
Modean:
Novak has repeatedly asserted that no one in the Bush Administration leaked the information to him, rather he was given the information during the course of two different interviews with Senior Administration Officials. On their face this seems to be contradictory, but it is not inconsistent when one considers that Novak often identifies people associated with the Whitehouse by the current Administration (Bush, Clinton, etc.). So no one in the Whitehouse talked to Novak, but someone in the Administration (whom he characterized as a non-pol) did, this means either State or Defense. Low and behold in the Washington Post today they indicated that the DOJ investigation will now extend beyond the Whitehouse to ...(drumroll please) State and Defense.There are a few old sayings that would apply hear, the first is never attribute to malice that which can be explained away by incompetence, and the other is Occam's Razor: Of two competing theories, all things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred.
Aubrey:
The investigation, if it ever gets that far, will discover that the requirements of the law will not be met. Plame will not meet, or even come close to meeting, the definition of the operatives the law sought to protect. Nobody will be able to show a serious, or even unserious, effort to keep her ID secret. It will become apparent that her employment was publicly-available knowledge if not publicly known. Or possibly publicly known, too.The leaker in question, should one ever be discovered, will then be able to make the case that he didn't know he was outing an undercover operative since she wasn't undercover.
It will all fizzle out on the legal end. That will be good for the dems who can then claim coverup. We'll hear about that for a year and a half.
My prediction, based on my review of the available public record, is that these two speculations will converge to make the whole "scandal" a non-issue (except to those presently enjoying it). I also think that those in the White House already know this to be the case. That's my bet. If I'm wrong, I'll sadly admit it. And if I'm correct, I'll admit that, instead.
(Note: Update posted after four comments made.)
Posted by oscarjr at October 1, 2003 11:18 PM | TrackBackB. No matter what comes from any investigation, the anti-war and anti-Bush crowd will see it as a cover-up. Whoever is found to have spilled the name will be a patsy put out by the administration as much as Novak is a patsy for having written the piece to begin with.
I haven't talked about it because I want to see where it ends up. So far, it's a bunch of speculation--and it would be too easy to be on the losing side of that speculation. I'm curious to see how it plays out, and suspect that it will change no one's view of the administration; those who hate Bush will still hate Bush, those who support him will probably have no reason to stop believing in him.
That's far more speculation than I had intended--you can hold me to it if I turn out to be wrong.
Posted by: zombyboy at 12:05 AMLike almost all scandals, this will end up with enough questions on either side that partisans will both be able to say "The full story didn't come out!". (or something like that)
No. Apologies will not be forthcoming.
If exhonerated, Dems will say "Cover-up!".
If found guilty, Repubs will seize on any loose ends to claim it was a liberal conspiracy.
Neither will take an objective view of the facts.
Posted by: Jon Henke at 07:53 AMThe administration seems to like keeping quiet and giving opponents just enough rope to hang themselves with. I suspect that might be the case here. We'll see.
Posted by: murdoc at 08:08 PMCool -- three comments and I agree with all of them.
(b) it will be, is my semi-educated speculation.
Posted by: Oscar Jr. at 09:47 PM