1 Boring Old Man

QUESTION: Dana, a lot of the stories about the Gonzales appearance tomorrow framed it as "his job is on the line." Is it?
MS. PERINO: Look, I think there’s a lot of hype about the hearing. This issue has been ongoing for I think over a couple of months now. The Justice Department has been fully responsive to the committee, and that’s going to culminate tomorrow in a hearing. But I think that one day’s hearing does not necessarily mean — I’ve heard it described as "make or break," and I would submit to you that the Attorney General, as you’ve reported, has been as forthcoming as he possibly can be, has laid it all out on the table for them and tomorrow he looks forward to answering their questions.
QUESTION: Is this a job security issue?
MS. PERINO: No, I don’t think so. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President, and the President wanted the Justice Department to be fully responsive and they have been. The President also said he needed to go to Capitol Hill and continue to talk to those members. He’s had many conversations with members of Congress by phone, while they were on their two-week recess, and tomorrow he’ll have a chance to talk to them in person.
QUESTION: Well, does he, and he alone, have to dig himself out of this controversy?
MS. PERINO: Look, the Attorney General has taken full responsibility for it, and I think that the Attorney General looks forward to answering those questions tomorrow.

I believe that the central issue in this and all of the other scandals that swirl around the trinity of Karl Rove, George Bush, and Richard Cheney come down to one shared trait – contempt. With President Bush, it’s most apparent is his famous sneer. With Cheney, it’s often called a sneer, but it’s more of a snarl. With Rove, it’s in the sarcastic wording of his speeches to rally supporters. Independent of its mode of expression, all three men have elevated contempt from a feeling or emotion to the level of a noun. They embody contempt. That contempt is global. The came into office with contempt for the other people of the world, particularly Arabs. They have contempt for their political oppenents – Democrats and "Liberals." They have contempt for the restraints of our system of checks and balances, for the Congress, for the Judiciary, for the Central Intelligence Agency, for the U.N., for the Geneva Conventions, for the Constitution, and even for Democracy itself – or at least Democracy unimpeded. And they immediately interpret any criticism as an enemy attack – retaliating with contempt, manipulation, and dirty tricks.

They came into office driven by years of contempt for our foreign policy and jumped at the chance to "brandish some steel" [Karl Rove] by trumping up a disasterous war in the Middle East. When confronted for lying by Joseph Wilson, they responded by destroying his wife’s career. They have misused every possible Presidential power – commander in chief, secrecy, signing statements, executive privledge, recess appointments – the list is endless. They sneer and snarl with actions as well as with their facial expressions and their words.

I think they really don’t even understand the Justice Department scandal. Since the President has the power to hire and fire the U.S. Attorneys at will, they can’t understand why their actions are being questioned. They don’t see that the President’s and the Attorney General’s denials of any direct involvement don’t exactly fit with their claims of having the power to do what they want to do. Both men deny knowing what was going on, yet they both use the word confidence in characterizing what happened. They don’t seem to even get that their arbitrary firing of U.S. Attorneys whose numbers are low in voter fraud cases and immigration cases without even knowing who they are or what they’ve done is being seen as an arbitrary and capricious misuse of their power. It’s just like their not seeing that their arbitrary and capricious distortions of prewar intelligence has produced a crisis in the meaning of America in the world, and in our own country.

It’s as if they see our Constitution as a Bill of Rights for the Presidential Triumverate – a set of powers for them to do use as they see fit. They don’t see it as a Bill of rights for the American people. It is a privilege to serve as President of the United States, a privilege to defend our rights, not their own. It is not their right to play out their own contemptuousness on the grand scheme of American policy. Government by contempt, by sneer, by snarl, by retaliation has no place here. Never has…