Oh, So Predictable

There would have been very short odds on this one in Vegas.

WaPo's E.J. Dionne Jr. has officially blamed the lack of significant indictments in the Plame Game on a White House cover-up.

As long as Bush still faced the voters, the White House wanted Americans to think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

In October 2003, the early period of the Fitzgerald investigation Dionne is writing about, I don't think anyone in the White House was the least bit concerned what Americans might think of Scooter Libby, but that's beside the point.

I don't think Rove spent too much time strategizing about Wilson at all, which is precisely why Fitzgerald was unable to nail him with anything.

Wilson may have been a big deal to the Left and its MSM friends, but geopolitically, he was less than a gnat. Rove was focused on the war, John Kerry and the economy. Knowing, as he did, that Wilson was a shameless, publicity seeking liar, Rove probably put Wilson's name on priority list C or D.

But Dionne and his ilk still don't realize that Wilson is a shameless, publicity seeking liar, so they don't get the big picture right. To make the Plame Game significant, they must make Wilson significant, and from that starting point on, they get it all wrong.

As if that's not bad enough, Dionne plows on:

Bush and his disciples would like everyone to assume that Libby was some kind of lone operator who, for this one time in his life, abandoned his usual caution. They pray that Libby will be the only official facing legal charges and that political interest in the case will dissipate.

You can tell the president worries that this won't work, because yesterday he did what he usually does when he's in trouble: He sought to divide the country and set up a bruising ideological fight. He did so by nominating a staunchly conservative judge to the Supreme Court.

E.J., old bud, take a moment to think.

How does the Harriet Miers nomination fit into your theory?

And, I might be all alone here, but I'd rather a president who's down on in the polls nominate a conservative to the Supreme Court than send troops to Somalia or Haiti, which your man Bubba did to deflect attention from his troubles.