The Press and the Public

This week has not started out well for the Bush Administration. Matt Cooper said that not only did he tell the grand jury about his conversation with Karl Rove, he also mentioned a discussion he had with Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby ("Scooter" to his pals), in which Libby also identified Valerie Plame's position with the CIA. This had been much rumored but not confirmed until now, and proves that two-thirds of Scott McClellan's Axis of Not Involved were actually up to their eyeballs. Keep your eye out for Elliott Abrams to enter the picture soon, as well. On a related front, Bush changed his criteria for how he'll deal with people involved in the Plame leak. Last year, he confirmed that anyone involved would be fired. Today however, he specified that anyone who committed a crime would be fired, presumably meaning that involvement alone is no longer enough. Since Rove's own lawyer has admitted that his client is involved, Bush had no choice but to raise the bar.

But the most interesting new development today may be a new ABC News-Washington Post poll that shows only 25 percent of people surveyed thought the White House was cooperating fully with the special prosecutor. Of course, when respondents were broken down by party, those numbers shifted, but even so, Republicans weren't able to muster 50 percent support. Only 47 percent of Republicans agreed that the White House is cooperating. On the question of whether Karl Rove should continue to work in the White House if he leaked classified info, 71 percent of Republicans, and 75 percent of respondents overall, felt he should be fired. Those are strong numbers that the President so far is ignoring.

It seems like the dynamic here is the opposite of what it was during the Clinton years. When Clinton was having his troubles, the liberal media was all over it, insisting that BIG ISSUES were at stake, but the public couldn't get excited about it. No matter how much it was hyped, the polls never reflected a large groundswell of concern among the public. In the current situation, the liberal media hasn't seemed so impressed with the wrongdoing, and they've only recently been spurred to press the matter at all (even if it is because McClellan lied directly to them and this time it's personal). Will the liberal media continue to pay attention and give the public what it seems to want? Or will they return to lecture mode and educate us about how things "really work" in Washington?