The Dish

The question before the House, as it were, is not a legal one, it seems to me. The question is an ethical one. The president cannot, technically speaking, "leak" classified information for the simple reason that if the president decides to declassify it, it’s no longer "classified," and therefore becomes not a "leak" but a "disclosure." As a debater’s point, this is pretty damn airtight. But it’s also a little disturbing. Let’s say a president has a political beef against a covert CIA agent. And let’s say he outs that agent for political purposes. I’m not saying we have hard evidence this has happened in the Plame case – we don’t at all – but let’s posit such a hypothetical case. Legally, the president’s in the clear. Constitutionally, he’s in the clear. But ethically: surely not. In fact, ethically, it seems to me, he would be acting in a way that could well lead to Congressional censure or even impeachment. You don’t treat spies’ cover as tools for your Beltway push-back.

That’s not what we know in this case. In this case, we’re merely talking about the following set of circumstances. A president is challenged in his public account of pre-war intelligence. The president authorizes a selective leak of classified information to rebut the challenge. He selects only those parts of the classified information that supports his case, and omits the rest that actually show parts of the government disputing his case. He authorizes the veep to authorize Libby to give the selected information to a pliant reporter for the New York Times. Meanwhile, his public statements reiterate an abhorrence of all unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

This is an interesting insight into the president’s character. It simply shows his willingness to use the prerorgatives of his office as the guardian of our national security to play political hardball against opponents. It shows a conscious capacity to mislead people by selectively disclosing data that skews – for a while – the public’s understanding of the facts. It proves that this president is capable of deliberately misleading the American people as a gambit in a Beltway spat, or even just to keep ahead of the news cycle. It wasn’t Karl Rove’s dirty tricks or David Addington’s Schmittian ideology or Dick Cheney’s "dark side" here. It’s George W. Bush – hard-assed political fighter, micro-managing press coverage of a minor matter, using the privileges of his constitutional position as commander-in-chief to play Washington hardball at a time of war. This is what we know. And it helps round out the picture of who this man is, doesn’t it?

(Photo: Kevin Dietsch / UPI / Landov)

"We Christians … are rejoicing over what God has done – and we’ve found out that it’s true that when the church of Jesus Christ arrives at the gates of hell, the gates of hell cannot prevail against it," – Flip Benham, president of "Operation Save America," a Christianist group, in North Carolina. Their triumph? They claim to have gotten a local gay pride parade canceled.

"There’s a lot of leaking in Washington, D.C. It’s a town famous for it. This investigation in finding the truth, it will not only hold someone to account who should not have leaked ‚Äî and this is a serious charge, by the way. We’re talking about a criminal action, but also hopefully will help set a clear signal we expect other leaks to stop, as well. And so I look forward to finding the truth," – President George W. Bush, October 7, 2003.

"Q: But can you confirm that the President would fire anyone on his staff found to have leaked classified information?

McClellan: I think I made that very clear last week. The topic came up, and I said that if anyone in this administration was responsible for the leaking of classified information, they would no longer work in this administration." – White House press conference, October 6, 2003.

The president’s self-defense at this point must be that if he, the president, decides to leak classified information, like the NIE assessment, then, by definition, it isn’t a classified leak. POTUS gets to decide what is and isn’t classified. And so he cannot commit the wrong or crime he decries in others. He can break no secrets because the secrets are his to break. He is above the law because, in terms of executive privilege, he is the law.

Thanks for the emails. A couple of other points. I don’t see this is as a "big government" proposal, because the government won’t be running hospitals or providing insurance. It’s just mandating that everyone get an insurance policy. Is it a function of "big government" to mandate getting a driver’s license? I like the Massachusetts plan precisely because it avoids big government, while dealing with public goods. It’s also a practical, incremental plan, based on existing arrangements, but expanding and developing them – quintessentially conservative, in the Oakeshottian sense. It’s not a product of a rationalist, Ira Magaziner think-tank master-study, foisted on the unsuspecting world by High Priestess Rodham.

I also like the fact that it’s a consequence of one state, dealing with its own issues. Funny how the best reforms come from the states, isn’t it, by people who know their own communities better than anyone else? The current GOP is anti-federalist, because it’s become a religious party, and such a party naturally resists devolving power to states that may be more secular than Tom DeLay’s version of God would like. But conservatism in the old sense was not afraid for Massachusetts and Alabama and California to try out different solutions, because conservatism in the pre-Bush years was not a primarily religious force. The good news is we’ll find out in due course how this works in one place before others take it up. I’m also struck that this plan is a product of divided government. In the 1990s, national divided government gave us welfare reform and a balanced budget. Subsequently, one party government has given us massive debt, immense corruption, and a huge expansion in federal power. There’s a lesson here. And it’s: "Vote Democrat This November." Unless, of course, your specific Democratic candidate is intolerably bad, or your existing Republican is extremely good.

Update: More useful commentary here.

In one word: genius. In two: Surrender, Viacom!

A baby is born at 1:23 p.m. on 4-5-06 and weighs 7 pounds.

Tom Maguire sees it differently:

"[A]s Mr. Gerstein noted, and as the excerpt printed by Mr. Sullivan makes clear, we don’t know what Cheney and Bush discussed before Bush authorized the partial disclosure of the NIE.  President Bush may have been vitally interested specifically in discrediting Joe Wilson; he may not have heard the name, and simply authorized the disclosure to help with the White House side of the press coverage.  That said, Bush’s involvement preceded the July 8 meeting with Judy Miller, (p. 19/20 of .pdf), which is not great news.
So, was "Bush Nailed" for helping with a White House PR pushback? I’ll bet he gets involved with White House message management pretty regularly."

Make your own mind up. But it seems to me that a president who routinely decries leaking of classified information has now been revealed as someone who purposefully and with premeditation leaked classified information, gave his veep special clearance to do so, and did so during a very heated debate about possible malfeasance with respect to pre-war intelligence handling. Tom is within his rights to cling on to the scintilla of doubt that still exists. But at what point does that approach naivete? (When National Review maintains radio silence – ed.) Do we really think this president doesn’t know how to play hardball? A reader speculates:

"It seems I recall headlines a few months ago that questioned the relationship between Bush and Cheney, suggesting that it was very brittle.  Those have since gone away, at least from the first few pages, so it’s debatable as to whether there was any truth to the speculation.
Still, in light of the new information in the Plame case, might it be possible that Cheney and Bush have become so divided that Cheney, with the hunting dog (Fitzgerald) getting closer, has thrown the president under the bus?"

It may be a warning shot not to mess with Cheney, as the Bush meltdown continues. 

A new interest in an ancient text.

One conservative think-tank agrees with me on the Massachusetts healthcare plan. Another one disagrees. Make your own mind up.

Tiger Hawk dissects a know-nothing anti-immigrant proposal. His bottom line:

The question should not be whether we can keep out Mexicans, but what we should do about the rising Hispanic culture in this country? Can we create a system under which Mexican immigrants are happy to fly the Star-Spangled Banner, sing our songs, join us in our wars, think of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams as "founding fathers," and otherwise honor our great traditions? I think we can, but we have to let go of the twin sins of nativism and unthinking "multiculturalism" to do it.

Yep and yep.

(Photo: Steven Senne/AP.)