Catching Up on the DC Soap (Can This Administration Be Saved?)

So what happens next in the tragic soap opera of the Bush administration? Will Rove go aroving, will Scooter scoot to the prosecutor with the goods on Cheney? What's Fitzgerald up to anyway?

Not knowing, can't say, but if reading the pack journalism pressgeist, and between the lines of unsourced or unnamed sourced stories of recent vintage is the equivalent of reading tea leaves, here's some idea of what people who think they know are thinking.

You'll recall that the conventional wisdom way back when Scooter was indicted 10 days or so ago was that Karl Rove had dodged a bullet and would escape indictment. By the end of this past week, the feeling was building that Rove was likely to be indicted after all. Maybe this week, maybe next week.

After warning that Fitzgerald might not indict anyone, John Dean changed his tune. "Having read the indictment against Libby, I am inclined to believe more will be issued," he wrote. " In fact, I will be stunned if no one else is indicted."

The fickle finger of fate started pointing Rove's way with shadowy reports of vague prosecutorial activity in Rove's neighborhood. Then an inside story was leaked (apparently with press secretary Scott McClellan's fingerprints all over it) about growing opposition among White House staff to Rove sticking around.

Finally, Time wrote the obituary, in a story that looked to me to have Rove's pudgy digit tracks all over it, suggesting that Rove had accomplished what he set out to do, now he was tired and wanted to spend more time with his family. Time also predicted other personnel changes that last week everyone said Bush would never make. But they make sense covering for Rove's departure, like Lyndon Johnson eliminating his entire cabinet from consideration for vice president in 1964 so he wouldn't have to explain why he didn't pick Bobby Kennedy.

Scooter hobbled to court last week, his attorney loudly proclaiming his innocence. Some observers swear he will never go to trial, others think he'll just try to string it out long enough to get a pardon. But a name that kept appearing on every story of dastardly deeds last week was Dick Cheney.

John Dean wrote that "when one studies the indictment, and carefully reads the transcript of the press conference, it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney."

Cheney was also the chief target of some Republican attacks on the fake case for the Iraq war. He was the patsy in chief for spreading the lies of a known terrorist liar linking al Qeda and Iraq, even after the guy recanted, according to a New York Times story.

The Washington Post went after Cheney for creating and supporting US policies and practices using torture, and the lead story in today's Washington Post is: "Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials."

So does this mean Cheney is going to be indicted? Could be. But John Dean doesn't believe it will be because Libby falls for the alleged Fitzgerald strategy of big fish, bigger fish.

Dean wrote:Will Libby flip? Unlikely. Neither Cheney nor Libby (I believe) will be so foolish as to crack a deal. And Libby probably (and no doubt correctly) assumes that Cheney - a former boss with whom he has a close relationship - will (at the right time and place) help Libby out, either with a pardon or financially, if necessary.

Libby's goal, meanwhile, will be to stall going to trial as long as possible, so as not to hurt Republicans' showing in the 2006 elections. So if Libby can take the heat for a time, he and his former boss (and friend) may get through this. But should Republicans lose control of the Senate (where they are blocking all oversight of this administration), I predict Cheney will resign "for health reasons."

Perhaps the more interesting question at this point is why is Cheney suddenly so popular? Is he really the Satanic Machiavelli, or is there a campaign to give him up as the fall guy? (It wouldn't be a set up, exactly, since there's no doubt he's done all the awful things attributed to him, and more.)

By this past week only a few lonely voices were asking, where was Bush in all this? Did Rove really deceive him, or did he know all about the Plame outing? And what is his responsibility for lying us into war, and approving and defending torture?

Three polls came out last week, all with similiar and similiarly devastating numbers for Bushcorps. But two of them asked a couple of interesting questions, especially when you put them together. When asked if Congress should consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, about 53% said yes. And in another poll, when asked if they thought Bush did lie us into the Iraq war, about 53% said yes. You do the math.