November 1, 2005
Liberals Foiled Again
By Jack Kelly

The talking heads on the network news shows Sunday described President Bush as "weak," the White House as "reeling," and his presidency as "beleaguered" after what most said was the worst week of his presidency.

Mr. Bush was forced to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted for lying to a federal grand jury. But if this is as bad as it gets, the president doesn't have much to worry about.

Mr. Bush's job approval ratings have plunged to the lowest level of his presidency (a level still higher than the low points of his seven immediate predecessors), chiefly because of the dismay of many conservatives at the nomination of Ms. Miers, whose judicial philosophy was known to few beyond the president and the First Lady.

But the nomination Monday of Samuel Alito, a judicial conservative with sterling legal credentials, provides a rallying point for both pro-Miers and anti-Miers conservatives, who will now aim at Democrats the broadsides they'd been firing at each other.

The Alito nomination also knocks from the front pages the controversy over the indictment of Libby. The fever swamp Left had been looking forward to a "Fitzmas," indictments by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that would deprive President Bush of Karl Rove, his chief political strategist, and would expose a White House plot to mislead America into the Iraq war. What they got instead was a "Fitzween" that was more trick than treat. The Libby indictment is Martha Stewart stuff. Mr. Libby is charged with having lied about from whom he learned that the wife of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer.

Mr. Fitzgerald indicted no one for the crime he supposedly was investigating for the last two years, whether anyone had deliberately outed a covert CIA agent. There was no underlying crime, and there was no conspiracy to cover up what wasn't a crime in the first place. Mr. Fitzgerald made it plain in his news conference that his prosecution of Libby would not delve into the conspiracy theories treasured by the Left.

"This indictment is not about the war," he said. "This indictment will not seek to prove the war was justified or unjustified." I feel sorry for Libby, whose life is ruined whether he beats the charges or not. But after him, the biggest losers are conspiracy mongering liberals.

They sent Fitzgerald out to hunt for bear, but all he bagged was a squirrel. Journalists were doing their best to paint that squirrel as ferocious. One noted that Libby is the first serving White House official to be indicted since the Grant administration. Journalists will flog it as hard as they can, but this story seems destined to fade from public consciousness as rapidly as did the indictment of two Clinton administration Cabinet secretaries.

Quick, who were they? (Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was acquitted at trial, and Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, who pled to a misdemeanor.) The American people apparently agree the Libby indictment is no big deal.

Only 45 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll think Libby did something illegal. And 56 percent think this was an isolated incident, not a sign of low ethical standards in the Bush administration.

Mr. Bush mended his fences with conservatives with the Alito nomination. He'll have a second honeymoon with them if he supports cuts in federal domestic spending to pay for hurricane relief, and proposes effective measures against illegal immigration.

The other drags on the president's popularity are the Iraq war and the economy. Though it has escaped media attention, the performance of the Iraqi security forces has been encouraging, and by next summer the number and experience of those forces should be sufficient to permit major American troop withdrawals.

The economy has grown at at least a 3 percent rate for the last 30 months, a better performance than during the Clinton administration, though you won't learn that from reading the papers. High gasoline prices are the principal consumer concern, but these were mostly hurricane related, and have declined 18 percent since Labor Day.

The poor liberals. Each time they think they've found the magic bullet that will destroy the Bush presidency, it misses its target. As Snidely Whiplash might say: "Curses. Foiled again!"

Jack Kelly is national security columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Blade of Toledo, Ohio.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_1_05_JKE.html