Sometimes I wish I'd been older when the biggest political story of the century, Watergate, occurred. At the time, I was in elementary school and we all suspected it had something to do with the flooding Ouachita River.
But I've been given another opportunity. Similar CYA activities seem to be happening now, although instead of a relatively harmless break-in setting off a scandal, it was a potentially deadly* outing of a CIA agent that triggered the current investigation.
What once was compared to a tight ship is now, by all appearances, sinking. Here's Howard Fineman on Hardball, transcript courtesy of JABBS:
HOWARD FINEMAN (NEWSWEEK): Right now, my sense, in reporting this, Chris, is that the Bush family, political family, is at war with itself inside the White House. My sense is, it's, it's, it's, it's Andy Card, the chief of staff, and his people against Karl Rove, the brain.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right.
FINEMAN: And that runs through a whole lot of things, whether it's Harriet Miers or Katrina. But it all starts with Iraq. And some submerged, but now emerging divisions within the administration over why we went into that war, how we went into that war and what was done to sell it. There are people are out for Karl Rove inside that White House, which makes his situation even more perilous.
Even more juicy gossip: Attytood's take on the possible fallout between Dick Cheny and George Bush, started by their lieutenants, Rove and Libby, pointing the fingers of blame at each other (if you can work "blame game" into this sentence, go right ahead).
Then we have the Miers nomination. It's clear this was a choice George Bush made all on his lonesome, and one wonders if he was told Harriet Miers would have to recuse herself during his impeachment trial.
Oh, did I say impeachment? AfterDowningStreet.org sponsored a poll, which reported more Americans favoring Bush's impeachment, by a margin of 50 to 44 percent. We're still at the "consider" and "if" stage of qualifying language, which puts us somewhere toward the end of Act II of All the President's Men.
When they remake ATPM, they'll have to decide how to narrow the focus, since this time round there are more characters than a Robert Altman film: Tom DeLay and Bill Frist are worthy of subplots, and if we throw in Katrina, our subtle political thriller will become a disaster flick.
Which makes me wonder, what will today's children remember about Watergate, the Sequel?
*(It's possible we haven't seen the fallout—and I mean that literally—from the leak yet. Whitley Strieber has more on the intelligence work Valerie Plame may have been involved in, including Russian nuclear components. And Firedoglake has penned an excellent wrap up of why this matters.)
[Links courtesy The Raw Story, What Really Happened, and of course the ever resourceful Heretik.]
