Oh, Howie! In the Washington Post today, Howard Kurtz lays out a side by side comparison of the current Bush CIA Leak scandal with the trumped up Clinton sex scandals of the 1990’s.
Kurtz is attempting to bring some levity into the discussion, but the bottom line on these scandals is that there is absolutely no comparison.
All through the 1990’s, in a scheme dubbed “the Arkansas Project” funded with millions of dollars from the secretive Pittsburgh millionaire wingnut Richard Mellon Scaife, the Republicans went after President Clinton with accusation upon accusation based on charges that the accusers knew to be false and misleading. When they finally got something on Mr. Clinton it was done via perjury trap about a sex lie.
President Bush’s people have blown the cover of a CIA operative and the company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, that appears to have been a key intelligence asset for monitoring the trafficking the black market in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We probably won’t know the value of what was lost when Brewster Jennings was exposed for many years. Nonetheless, there is litle doubt that the only beneficiaries of the leak were terrorists, in the long run, and Team Bush, in the short term.
And then there are dead and wounded. As the catch phrase goes: No one died when Clinton lied.
Here’s Howie’s comparison:
1) Personal involvement. Clinton was the man who assured the country he did not have sexual relations with that woman; Bush, as far as we know, had no direct involvement in Plamegate.
2) The stakes. Clinton’s slippery testimony was to cover up an extramarital affair with an intern, a huge personal embarrassment. The Bush administration’s outing of Valerie Plame was to get back at her husband over the WMD issue, a huge national embarrassment when the original rationale for war crumbled.
3) Top aides on the spot. Other than Sid Blumenthal testifying before a grand jury, Clinton’s dalliance largely did not involve other senior administration officials, although some were drawn into the cover-up investigation. Karl and Scooter, by contrast, are the most important advisers to the president and vice president.
4) Special prosecutor. Ken Starr was a moralist who was denounced by critics for hopping from Whitewater to Monica and publishing an X-rated report. Pat Fitzgerald is a well-regarded U.S. attorney who has been criticized for using strong-arm tactics against reporters.
5) Catch phrases. Clinton: The Big Creep. Distinguishing characteristics. It depends on what the definition of is is. Bush: not so much, except for Joe Wilson saying Rove should be “frog-marched out of the White House.”
6) White House defender. Clinton: Mike McCurry. Bush: Scott McClellan.
7) Outside defender. Clinton: James Carville. Bush: Ken Mehlman.
8) Defense lawyer. Clinton: Bob Bennett. Bush: Don Luskin (Rove), Joe Tate (Libby).
9) Most controversial character. Clinton: Linda Tripp. Bush: Judy Miller.
10) Vanity Fair spread. Monica posed while a prosecution witness; Valerie posed while a covert CIA operative.
