Remember when the rule of law was important to Republicans?
Years before Scooter Libby was sentenced to prison, long before unannounced Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson was Libby’s champion on the right. Republicans cared very much about the rule of law and perjury and obstruction of justice back then.
A few years ago, the priapic Democratic president could have made a fortune charging Republicans a quarter every time they used those three words. He kept the rule of law in business, when he wasn’t on the phone in the Oval Office, talking to a congressman about sending American troops to the Balkans, while otherwise engaged with an intern under his desk.
It was just sex, hissed the Democrats. It’s the rule of law, hissed the Republicans.
Now Republicans want a pardon for Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was convicted of lying and obstructing justice in the investigation of the Bush administration’s leaking the identity of a covert CIA officer whose husband had the wrong politics on the Iraq war.
Republicans make convoluted arguments about who leaked what first. And Democrats insist he is Cheney’s fall guy. I guess it all depends on what the definition of the rule of law is.
“What do you expect?” said my wife at breakfast. She’s a teacher and instructs our twin boys about the right and wrong of things. “They’re politicians. They’re acting like politicians. What do you expect from politicians?”
What do I expect from politicians? Not much. I would like to expect that politicians wouldn’t keep robbing us blind with high taxes even though every time a tax is raised a liberal gets his wings. And I’d expect them to put the nation’s security and that of our allies above their own individual political ambitions. It is depressing to see the American political class bolting away from Iraq, playing to American fear and exhaustion rather than leading, just as Iran gets ready to hoist the nuclear spear.
The outed and now former CIA officer is Valerie Plame, whose husband, Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger to determine if Iraq had bought nuclear material. Wilson concluded that Iraq had not bought the material. So concerned about her security after her name was published in a newspaper column, she posed on the cover of Vanity Fair with Jackie O sunglasses and with Wilson, the two of them in a convertible, stylish victims.
It was ridiculous and cynical. So I’m not championing Plame or Wilson here, or operatives who use them as symbols to cudgel President Bush. Wilson and Plame are as partisan as partisan can be. And as such they were transformed from human beings into objects of utility, tools for Democratic craftsmen.
But the Republicans also are partisan, and they proved it the other night at their presidential debate in New Hampshire. The candidates were asked: If elected, would you pardon Libby?
Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — two candidates without a real shot at the nomination — said no, they wouldn’t pardon him.
But the others hedged and danced around it, trying not to step in Fred Thompson’s footprints. He’s the actor who plays a law-and-order prosecutor on TV, and a former U.S. senator who is the unannounced 800-pound gorilla among Republican candidates. He’s a Libby champion, and the others must figure they can’t give Thompson all that room on the right.
So former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ripped on the sentence, calling it excessive, hinting at a pardon. “I think what the judge did today argues more in favor of pardon because this is excessive punishment,” said Giuliani, stepping on Thompson’s toes.
Arizona Sen. John McCain dodged it, saying he’d withhold judgment until after the appeal.
The famous varmint hunter, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, implied he’d pardon Libby and he personally attacked the special prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, an attack that will win Romney points among the GOP power brokers in the Illinois Combine now under federal investigation.
“In this case, you have a prosecutor who clearly abused prosecutorial discretion by going after somebody when he already knew that the source of the leak was [former State Department official] Richard Armitage,” Romney said. “He’d been told that, so he went on a political vendetta.”
Another expression of partisan bitterness came from Republican and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson. “Bill Clinton committed perjury at a grand jury, lost his law license. Scooter Libby got 30 months. To me, it’s not fair at all.”
Perhaps not. But Libby was convicted of his crimes. And the rule of law should be important to everyone, particularly to those who presume to lead us.
You take an oath. You give your word. It is not only your own word, but ours too, if you’re in leadership over us.
If the rule of law was good enough for Republicans then and if it’s good enough for Democrats now, it should be good enough for all of them, and all of us, all the time.
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jskass@tribune.com
