The Forest for the Trees

Don't lose track of the big picture. That's the point Frank Rich makes today. The Rove-Plame situation isn't the whole show by itself, it only opens up a door to a much bigger story.

[W]e shouldn't get hung up on [Karl Rove]--or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.
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Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."

Rich isn't the first to point this out, of course, but whatever scandal comes out of this, it's about how the U.S. came to send troops to Iraq and how the government bamboozled the American public to support that action. The subtext to this whole situation is how the Bush Administration has operated from day one with secrecy and innuendo to get what it wants. I'd disagree that Rove is just secondary, but that really comes down to what exactly his relationship to Bush is. If Rove is Bush's brain, as has been said, then he's as big a catch as Bush himself, even if he doesn't have all the Constitutional powers. If Bush is his own man, even to some degree (and I expect that he believes that of himself), then it's harder to say. But I do think we shouldn't rush to judgment about what's going on in the investigation. Fitzgerald will play the whole thing out on his own schedule.

As I was writing this item, The Sweet Smell of Success came on TV. I've never seen the movie before (although I did waste a couple of hours seeing the lame stage musical adaptation a few years back), and what's amazing is, even with its hep jazz soundtrack and fabulous noir cinematography, how timely it is today. Although originally inspired by Walter Winchell, J. J. Hunsecker today can easily be read as Karl Rove (much to Novak's consternation--he's always believed he was Hunsecker). Novak could be Sidney Falco, but Washington these days is filled with Sidney Falcos. Seeing the film is a reminder that what's going on in Washington is nothing new, and if Rove and even Bush go down over this, there will be a new gang in town in no time. Still, it never hurts for the rest of us to keep them honest and on their toes.