White House Shake Up? Not So Much
20 April 2006 10:23 am by Taylor Marsh
White House Shake Up? Not So Much
(cross-posted at firedoglake)
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| What shake up? |
As Josh Marshall
said very early this morning, “where are the new faces?” Matt
Stoller talks about the
fake shake-up, with Jesse Berney adding his
take too. The bottom line is that all this talk about White House changes
so far is more about moving familiar players around, without anything dramatic
being delivered from The
Decider.
Frankly, I've got my doubts about Rove's “demotion.” For me, Bush
and Rove will be tied at the hip until the latter leaves freely or by force.
The bottom line is that Deadeye is still there. Donald Rumsfeld isn't going
anywhere, at least not yet. With Rove in full campaign mode, where he always
does the most damage to Democrats. Remember, a cornered animal is always most
dangerous: Rove's perceived demotion, his power perceived as usurped, with him
back on the campaign trail where he can give us fits, is where we now find Rove,
with something to prove at this point. His president has plummeted, with investigations
looming in the not too distant future if he fails. The president and Karl Rove
are in survival mode.
However, something else popped up today that really piqued my interest. Scotty's
ticked.
On that score, many people who know the administration best are privately
dubious. Presidents, more than chiefs of staff, determine how White Houses
operate, they said, noting that Bush has shown that he prefers a tight circle
of advisers and does not welcome the advice of outsiders. As Bush put it on
Monday, in asserting that he would not fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,
“I'm the decider, and I decide what's best.”Rove's return to a role that closely mirrors that which he played in Bush's
first term demonstrates how much this White House has now shifted to survival
mode — and how far events have pushed the president from the grand ambitions
with which he opened his second term just 15 months ago.Then, with Rove as the animating force, the president sought to engineer
Republican political dominance by remaking government with such far-reaching
initiatives as his plan to remake the Social Security program. Today, Social
Security stands as Exhibit A of what went wrong domestically in 2005.
Evidently, McClellan doesn't like what went down over the Plame affair and
isn't happy with some of the happenings inside the White House inner circle.
Specifically, having to eat Libby's dirt and Karl's crap over the misinformation
Scotty was sent out to spread regarding Valerie Plame. This bit of information
is positively dishy delicious.
In any event, McClellan apparently has let it be known that he is a little
dissatisfied with some people himself. In a later segment on “Dayside,”
Texas author Wayne Slater, author of Bush's Brain, was interviewed about the
news that Karl Rove would no longer be a policy adviser to Bush.Instead of confining himself to that topic, Slater went off onto McClellan,
who also is from Texas, saying, “I know for a fact back here in Texas
from talking to members of the McClellan family that they weren’t very
happy about what happened when Scott was sent out, they believe by Rove and
Libby, to say that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the Valerie Plame
affair when in fact they were involved in some capacity. … He felt that
damaged his credibility. You aren’t going to hear Scott talk about that,
but that’s fact.”Why telling a lie about something like that would bother McClellan when he
has told so many others is beyond me, except for the fact of that little old
grand jury investigating pending out there. Was McClellan participating in
the cover-up and is he under suspicion for that? Inquiring minds want to know
whether Bush just wanted to remove another potential indictee from his inner
circle.
Slater, who wrote Bush's Brain has something else to say on the
Rove front. He disagrees that it's not a big deal. According to Slater, who
knows the terrain by heart, the fact that Rove isn't handling policy matters
anymore is a definite power “loss.” As for how that shakes out for
Democrats, I'd say Mr. Rove is likely to take his fury out on us. Scorched earth,
circa 2006, here we come.
