“President Dennis Hastert” has a nice ring to it. And it’ll soon be a reality if US President George W. Bush does as he said he will.
If Bush really did vow to fire the leaker, he’ll have to fire Cheney, and then fire himself.
Can the president fire himself? Yes. It’s called “resigning.”
Nixon did it, and life went on.
Earlier, Bush could’ve fired Rumsfeld and Rove, and we wouldn’t be talking about leaks. But that window of opportunity’s now closed. So little do we hear from either man that we doubt they still live in Washington, let alone work there. So will Bush really fire himself?
It depends upon what your definition of “is” is.
“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush declared when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson complained the Bush administration leaked the secret identity of his CIA-officer wife, Valerie Plame, to the media. “And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of,” Bush cryptically added.
“Taken care of.” What does that mean, exactly?
Blame it on too much “Sopranos” watching. When someone in Sopranoland says a no-goodnik will be “taken care of,” it usually doesn’t mean a lavish trip to the Bahamas, or free flight, food and golf at St. Andrew’s in Scotland (at least, not now that Jack Abramoff’s in jail and it’s now firmly established at law that such largess is way too way over-the-top for anyone except Enron executives).
In Sopranoland, being “taken care of” usually means “getting whacked.”
But since Tony Soprano isn’t president (yet), and Washington, D.C. isn’t Sopranoland (yet), most people — not just the media — thought that Bush meant he’d fire the leaker — which is a “whacking” of sorts, for sure, unless you really want to fall upon your bureaucratic sword so as to pick up one of those cushy Capitol lobbying jobs where they really do “take care of” you with handsome paychecks and perks more discreet than Abramoff’s but still far transcending things like “business class” travel. But just to be sure, the media asked Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, “(W)ould someone” who leaked “lose their job in the White House?”
“If anyone in this administration was involved in it (the leaking of Plame’s identity), they would no longer be in this administration,” McClellan obliquely replied.
Can’t you just imagine Tony Soprano saying the exact same thing?
What does “no longer be” mean, exactly? If it’s the will of President Tony Soprano, that could mean getting “whacked.” Because when you “get whacked,” as in “killed,” you will “no longer be,” right?
That’s the language and world of President Tony Soprano. But if it’s the will and language and world of President Bush, does “no longer be” mean just getting fired?
“At a minimum,” McClellan replied, which most people took to be a “yes, they’ll get fired” answer. Of sorts. “At a minimum” means, “You’ll get fired, and something else bad will happen.”
“At a minimum” is full of innuendo, but it’s meaningful innuendo. “At a minimum” could include things like criminal prosecution, or scratching you off the Washington Beltway “A” list for all those White House dinners and sleep-overs in the Lincoln Bedroom. It could include a really painful income tax audit, or getting shipped to Guantanamo without a lawyer. It could mean who knows what in an administration where torture and secret courts and warrantless wiretapping are the order of the day.
But “at a minimum” could also include a good Soprano-style “whacking.” Because if getting fired is “a minimum,” what’s the maximum? “Whacking” is the maximum. Just ask any Iraqi politician.
Why did Bush leak? Speaking this week at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the president first haltingly answered, “Yes, no, I, this is,” then clammed up, just like Tony Soprano’s lawyer would tell him to: “There’s an ongoing legal proceeding which precludes me from talking a lot about the case,” he finally blurted out.
Spoken like a true Soprano. But Bush then asserted he “declassified” the infamous National Intelligence Estimate purporting — erroneously — to refute Wilson’s claims that Iraq had not sought to acquire “yellow cake” uranium for weapons, “for people to see the truth.” The truth of what?
If Bush really “declassified” the NIE report “for people to see the truth” about why America extended its terror war to Iraq, why did the White House not formally tell anyone — not even the triumvirate of loyalist “reporters” to whom Libby leaked it — “Here’s the truth, come and see?”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly confirmed a while back Bush’s claim to have instigated his Iraq war because Saddam Hussein unsuccessfully “tried to kill my dad.”
The war in Iraq — maybe it all really does come down to “getting whacked.”
