HARRY ASKS, THE STANDARD DELIVERS

Bush Suckers the Democrats: Anatomy of a scandal that wasn't. (William Kristol, 07/28/2003, Weekly Standard)

KARL ROVE is a genius. No--Rove probably gets more credit than he deserves for political smarts, and the president gets too little, so let's rephrase that: George W. Bush is a genius.

Almost two weeks ago, the president ordered his White House staff to bollix up its explanation of that now-infamous 16-word "uranium from Africa" sentence in his State of the Union address. As instructed, and with the rhetorical ear and political touch for which they have become justly renowned, assorted senior administration officials, named and unnamed, proceeded to unleash all manner of contradictory statements. The West Wing stood by the president's claim. Or it didn't. Or the relevant intelligence reports had come from Britain and were faulty. Or hadn't and weren't. Smelling blood, just as they'd been meant to, first the media--and then the Democratic party--dove into the resulting "scandal" head first and fully clothed.

Belatedly, but sometime soon, the divers are going to figure out that they've been lured into a great big ocean--with no way back to shore. Because the more one learns about this Niger brouhaha that White House spokesmen have worked so hard to generate, the less substance there seems to be in it. As we say, George W. Bush is a genius.

One would tend to doubt that the whole thing was set up as a tar baby, but once the Democrats started punching at it the White House did and does seem wholly unconcerned by the prospect of Democrats basing their opposition to the war on the idea that Saddam never had a WMD program. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 20, 2003 11:23 AM