Michael Barone, writing in today's Wall Street Journal, has a look at the big picture after the failure of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Karl Rove. What he sees is what many of us have seen, a press so desperate to cause problems for an administration they abhor that they willfully ignore facts and logic that should deter them.
Still, it was clear early on that the likelihood that Mr. Rove violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was near zero. Under the law, the agent whose name was disclosed would have had to have served overseas within the preceding five years (Valerie Plame, according to her husband's book, had been stationed in the U.S. since 1997), and Mr. Rove would have had to know that she was undercover (not very likely).
Those facts were pointed out very early on, prior to Mr. Fitzgerald's appointment, and fleshed out when the 'scandal' was still in diapers. Mr. Barone points out that the press, blindly following the liberal blogosphere, ignored these facts and pursued the 'scandal' that would bring down the administration. They were busy searching for a crime that would ratify their differences with the administration over policy, as if proving the White House had "cheated" in combating the negative press it was receiving would prove the underlying policy decisions were wrong. They are distinct and separate, and the press was wrong to write and believe otherwise.
That belief has its perils for journalism, as the Fitzgerald investigation has shown. The peril that the press may find itself in the hot seat, but even more the peril that it will get the story wrong. The visible slavering over the prospect of a Rove indictment is just another item in the list of reasons why the credibility of the "mainstream media" has been plunging. There's also a peril for the political left. Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them.
The lessons learned should be at least two. First, there ought to be a crime before there's a conviction, as Rove has been convicted over and over prior to this week's acquittal. (In that regard it's worth noting that even Scooter Libby is not charged with 'outing' Ms. Plame.) Second, though you may differ over policy, you do not undermine the policy by attacking the tactics associated with the policy. You'll need to address the policy itself if you wish to win the argument.
6/16/06 0950: Lorie Byrd had a look at the same article today.
