Rich on IraqGate

Frank Rich certainly does rule. Although I'm not sure about his final point, the rest of today's NYT op-ed is right on. One of his points is basically that we need to quit thinking of this as RoveGate. This isn't about Rove. This is about the administration and, in particular, the mendacity that led us into the we'll-be-damned-lucky-if-this-doesn't-turn-into-a-full-fledged-quagmire of Iraq.

I sometimes get extremely depressed that so many of my countrymen aren't paying enough attention--or aren't being honest enough--to be outraged by the actions of this pathetic and criminal administration. Sometimes I then remember that Nixon maintained strong support until the evidence against him became irrefutable. That gives me brief hope. But then I remember that irrefutable evidence is damned hard to come by. What's needed--as the also terrible Reagan administration realized--is just plausible deniability. And that's relatively easy to maintain. Many presidents have a pack of partisan supporters who will do almost anything to avoid admitting that that president has done something wrong. Almost no matter how flimsy the excuse, so long as you aren't caught red-handed, you can maintain the support of someone with a sufficiently strong desire to support you. Add to this that many of the non-partisans in the political center, the ones crucial to determining whether a "tipping point" has been reached, have a strong background inclination to believe their government to be honest, and the administration gets what is in essence a strong home-field advantage.

On the other hand, if your actions are nefarious enough, it's even a little tough to maintain minimally plausible deniability. Reagan himself was finally caught out in Iran-Contra, even though the Democrats--in a typically and foolishly Democratic act of civic-mindedness--elected not to impeach him, concluding that the country could not withstand another presidential crisis so soon on the heels of Watergate. (The contrast with the actions of Republicans during the Clinton administration is particularly striking, of course.)

I want the truth to come out in this case in part because I desperately want those Americans who are still in the dark to see the true nature of this administration. I want that for two reasons: first, because it's simply important to know the truth and set the historical record straight; second, because we can't afford to make another electoral mistake of this magnitude. No country is great enough to suffer leaders of this stripe more than a few times and maintain its greatness.

But no matter how this turns out--even if every American finally comes to his senses about the Bush administration as a result of the Rove leak--nothing will change the fact that these people got away with it through five years, two vicious presidential campaigns, an essentially stolen election, and a transparently mendacious case for a possibly unjust and potentially disastrous war. Any nation that allows itself to be so badly duped by men such as these for so long faces a rocky and uncertain future. Even if we finally come to our collective senses on this one we have proven that we can be very stupid and very ignorant for at least five years and probably more. And, as we've already seen, five years is long enough to run even a great nation pretty badly off the rails.