Stonewalled In The West Wing

The Nation: McClellan's Silence Isn't Fooling Anyone

(The Nation) 

Carl Cameron of Fox News asked if Bush continues "to have confidence in Mr. Rove?" McClellan wouldn't even touch this down-the-middle pitch: "Again, these are all questions coming up in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. And you've heard my response on this." And when another reporter asked McClellan to describe the importance of Rove to the Bush Administration, he replied, "Do you have questions on another topic?"

By the time my turn came, I realized I was not going to be able to cause any crack in the wall. But I had to try, and I attempted to slightly redefine the issue. I noted,

There's a difference between commenting publicly on an action and taking action in response to it. Newsweek put out a story, an e-mail saying that Karl Rove passed national security information on to a reporter that outed a CIA officer. Now, are you saying that the President is not taking any action in response to that? Because I presume that the prosecutor did not ask you not to take action, and that if he did, you still would not necessarily abide by that; that the President is free to respond to news reports, regardless of whether there's an investigation or not. So are you saying that he's not going to do anything about this until the investigation is fully over and done with?

In other words, how about forgetting the crime and focusing on the leak? He responded,

Well, I think the President has previously spoken to this. This continues to be an ongoing criminal investigation. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States. And we're just not going to have more to say on it until that investigation is complete.

But Bush has not said what he intends to do about Rove now that there is public evidence that Rove leaked information on Valerie Wilson. (And if Bush wants to get to the bottom of this, shouldn't he just whistle Rove into his office and ask, "Karl, what gives?") So I pushed on:

But you acknowledge that he is free, as President of the United States, to take whatever action he wants to in response to a credible report that a member of his staff leaked information? He is free to take action if he wants to?

But there would be no such acknowledging. McClellan said,

Again, you're asking questions relating to an ongoing investigation, and I think I've responded to it.

He hadn't. But then why should my question receive special treatment this day?

Other Rove-related questions were hurled at him. He refused to touch a single one. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post took a stab as well:

Scott, I think you're [being] barraged[d] today in part because we -- it is now clear that twenty-one months ago, you were up at this podium saying something that we now know to be demonstratively false. Now, are you concerned that in not setting the record straight today that this could undermine the credibility of the other things you say from the podium?

McClellan showed no such concern:

Again, I'm going to be happy to talk about this at the appropriate time. Dana, you all -- you and everybody in this room, or most people in this room, I should say, know me very well and they know the type of person that I am. And I'm confident in our relationship that we have. But I will be glad to talk about this at the appropriate time, and that's once the investigation is complete.

Everybody in the room -- and out of it -- should review McClellan's exchange with the reporters to see how he and this White House do business. After what transpired, no reporter should take McClellan's word at face value (if they ever did). Moreover, the larger issue is not his -- and Bush's -- credibility but the wrongdoing committed by a senior White House official and the apparent lack of a response from the White House. (And remember, Bob Novak's column outing Valerie Wilson as a CIA officer cited two unnamed senior Bush Administration officials.) The White House is adopting a familiar media strategy: say nothing, don't fuel the story, wait for it to pass -- and ignore the substance of the issue. Bush aides must be hoping that the media lose interest and are not provided any further reasons to headline this story. They are probably also hoping that the Democrats fail to create the sort of political storm that would compel journalists to continue to give the Rove scandal prominent play. Maybe their stonewall will hold. And what's the alternative? Tell the obvious truth and admit that Bush's most important adviser committed an act that Bush has said warrants dismissal? But what's the percentage in that? With McClellan providing no answers related to the Rove scandal, the question is whether the White House's we-can't-comment stance will allow it to dodge yet another troubling and inconvenient reality.