Op-Ed Contributor
New Scandal, Old Mistakes
By LANNY J. DAVIS
Published: October 29, 2005
Washington
FOR those of us who lived through the Clinton White House, it's déjà vu all over again.
The indictment against Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, by the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald presents a challenge in political-crisis management not just for the White House, but for the Democrats as well. And based on recent evidence, both are falling into the same old mistakes.
First, each side seems unable to resist applying a double standard, doing and saying exactly what only recently it criticized the other side for doing and saying.
Even before yesterday's indictments, Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee were accusing the Republicans of being responsible for a "culture of corruption." But I remember the outrage within the Democratic Party when Republicans rushed to the microphones to accuse the Clintons of "corruption" over Whitewater, the F.B.I. files, the travel office, campaign finance and so on - all issues that turned out to be rabbit holes without any findings of guilt, much less indictments. In the end, using an isolated scandal to tie up an entire administration only hurts the nation (and tends to come back to haunt the scandal-mongering party).
Equally remarkable, some Republicans are now suggesting that perjury is not such a big deal. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas said last weekend that perjury before a grand jury is only a "technicality," comparing Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation to that of Martha Stewart, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime." (To their credit, the editorialists at The Wall Street Journal had the intellectual honesty this week of admitting that perjury is perjury.)
Second, both sides seem too quick to attack the motives of their adversaries rather than dealing with the facts. Already we hear Republican leaders suggesting that Mr. Fitzgerald has "lost his way" or is "criminalizing" ordinary politics. I often wonder whether those of us in the Clinton White House who attacked the motives of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater special prosecutor, and tried to demonize him personally would have been better off if we had focused solely on his professional misjudgments and his disproportionate expenditure of time, effort and money.
Similarly, the Democrats are playing up the idea that White House officials may have endangered national security in playing hardball politics. Well, I can remember all the times I picked up the phone and talked "on background" to reporters, "pushing back" against rumors damaging to President Clinton and citing information that I thought was "out there." I don't remember ever worrying about whether the facts that I felt were public knowledge might have been classified. But even if I had, I would probably have rationalized that anything I had heard on the grapevine couldn't possibly be a state secret. If every political aide was prosecuted for those kinds of conversations with the press corps, I'm afraid there wouldn't be enough jails to hold us.
Third, both sides seem to believe that deny-deny-deny is the only option - rather than dealing with the facts as they are, accepting responsibility as quickly as possible, and moving on. Certainly, in retrospect, most of us who remain great believers in the Clinton presidency wish that the Monica Lewinsky matter could have been concluded much earlier, so that the last two years of the administration could have been more productive and fulfilling for President Clinton and the country.
Now President Bush must do something that for him, it seems, is the most difficult task: admit a mistake. First, he must send his press secretary, Scott McClellan, into the White House press room to apologize for his misleading the American people - probably based on incomplete or inaccurate information he was given - when he denied involvement by White House officials in the disclosure that Valerie Wilson was a C.I.A. officer.
More important, President Bush should follow the ultimate rule of White House damage control: the buck stops here. He should admit that this entire mess could have been avoided had the White House, including the vice president, criticized Ambassador Joseph Wilson openly and directly, rather than whispering "on background" into the ears of certain reporters that his wife was responsible for sending him to investigate possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger.
And then, after reminding everyone that Mr. Libby is entitled to the presumption of innocence, Mr. Bush should focus on the people's business and the far more serious problems facing America.
The best result of this latest scandal, and the hypocrisy and finger-pointing exhibited on both sides, would be for voters to say, "A pox on both your houses," reject the scandal culture and gotcha politics of both parties and seek new politics of common cause, collegiality and the public interest. The alternative is that most people will conclude that in American politics today the only standard is the double standard, and the cycles of conflict and rancor will continue.
Tigger_Magic said:Why is it that when a special prosecutor is investigating Republicans he is credited with professionalism and integrity, while a special prosecutor investigating Democrats is accused of partisanship, unprofessional behavior and dishonesty?
Tigger_Magic said:
). Sort of a sad response. 
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