A Break From Vacation for a Little Politics

Having spent the day around the White House (more about that later), it's been interesting to watch the current kerfuffle over the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame CIA outing affair. It appears now that Karl Rove was the source of the information, but did not do so in violation of any laws. Instead of the media helping the Dems collect a high-level scalp, the whole thing seems to have blown up on the media itself, and the self-righteous Dems who are calling for Rove's firing are looking a little silly. Political Diary has a good recap of the situation:

'Gotcha' Bites Back

As second-term political scandals go, the Plame Affair hardly compares to Iran-Contra or Monicagate, and has done far more damage to the media than to Team Bush. Karl Rove is now back in the Valerie Plame hot seat, two years after the covert CIA official was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Many Democrats had hoped at the time that the media firestorm would damage President Bush's re-election efforts by forcing the ouster of his chief political advisor. It didn't happen, even though rumors and press speculation had seized on Mr. Rove from day one.

Two years later, the ball appears to have moved up the field exactly one yard: An email from Time Magazine's Matt Cooper to his bosses reveals that, two days before the Novak column, Mr. Rove had tried to cast doubt on former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson's public campaign to exculpate Saddam of having tried to buy uranium ore in Africa. Mr. Rove evidently noted that Mr. Wilson had only been tapped originally to go to Niger to investigate the uranium issue because his wife who worked at the CIA had proposed the junket.

But Mr. Rove did not name her, and it's not clear he even knew her name, knew it was supposed to be secret, and knew the U.S. government had been actively bent on concealing her identity -- all stipulated by the applicable federal statute. The law was meant to punish leakers whose goal was deliberately to damage U.S. national security and endanger covert agents by exposing them, none of which seems to apply here.

Other than "welcome to hardball politics," there was never much of a scandal in the Plame incident. The Cooper email doesn't shed any new light on who actually leaked Ms. Plame's name and it leaves Mr. Rove secure in his West Wing office. Indeed, he doesn't seem to be damaged at all by the scandal, even if the White House has toned down its previous full-throated defenses. Inside the party, Mr. Rove remains one of the most popular figures in the administration. He's apparently still on the fundraising circuit -- it was recently announced that he will headline a fundraiser later this summer for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a likely U.S. Senate candidate.

Meanwhile, the media, in its rush to make a crime out of what was perhaps an innocent answer to a journalist's logical question -- who picked Joe Wilson for the Niger mission? -- is taking much more of a beating. What an irony if the only crime here turns out to be the contempt convictions of Mr. Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller for refusing to testify about the Plame outing. Lately the media has been pounding its collective breast, saying the Republic is threatened because leakers will no longer leak if they can't be assured of absolute confidentiality even under the threat of prison. Yeah, right. We're here to assure you that leakers will still leak. Whatever the outcome of the Plame investigation, there will be no shortage of anonymously-sourced news to fill your front pages.

It looks to me that the only one going to jail in this matter will be Judith Miller of the NY Times.

Update 7/15 on Rove situation - things are looking even better for Karl.