Inside Politics

Smith and McCain

Bradley Smith is leaving Washington with a few words in regard to Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who opposed Mr. Smith’s appointment to the Federal Election Commission five years ago.

Mr. Smith, who is returning to Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, earned the enmity of Mr. McCain and other would-be campaign finance reformers by arguing that such legislation was hopelessly misguided.

“McCain has always refused to meet with me,” Mr. Smith told National Review’s Byron York for the July 18 issue of the magazine.

“I tried to meet him once at a public hearing. He was at the table, and I went up and I said, ’Senator,’ and I held out my hand. And he instinctively took my hand, and then he looked up and realized who it was, and he yanked his hand away and said, ’I’m not going to shake your hand. You’re a bully and a coward, and you have no regard for the Constitution. I don’t have to talk to you. I’m not going to talk to you.’ It was right in front of a large number of people.”

When Mr. York asked whether the senator had really called him a bully and a coward, Mr. Smith replied: “Uh-huh. And corrupt, too. He always calls me corrupt. And my wife says, ’If you’re corrupt, you’re the worst corrupt person I’ve ever seen. Where are the fur coats? The watches? The cars? The fancy trips?’”

Mr. Smith said he doesn’t think Mr. McCain understands his own signature issue.

“He is woefully ill-informed on campaign finance issues,” Mr. Smith said. “I have seen him repeatedly misstate what the law is, misstate what court decisions held, and I think that’s one reason he gets so angry when he talks about it. It’s because he doesn’t really understand what a complex issue it is, what a difficult issue it is, he doesn’t understand the court hearings, he doesn’t understand how we’ve gotten where we are — so he just gets mad.”

Wishful thinking?

The Republican chairman and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday speculated on a scenario under which Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor might consider changing her mind on stepping down if Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist retired and President Bush offered to make her chief justice.

Several senators mentioned the idea to her, said Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican.

“The response that I heard [from other senators] was that she said she was flattered, that she didn’t say no,” Mr. Specter said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” “I think it would be quite a capping to her career if she served for a time, maybe a year or so.”

Given the praise Justice O’Connor has received from liberals since her retirement announcement, she would be a lock to be confirmed as chief justice, said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat.

“I think it would be a very doable thing,” he said.

Rove named in leak

Top White House adviser Karl Rove was one of the secret sources who spoke to reporters about a CIA official whose identity was leaked to the press, Newsweek magazine reports in its latest edition.

Reuters news service reports that Newsweek said Mr. Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Mr. Rove talked to Time magazine about former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame.

Mr. Luskin said Mr. Rove recently gave Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper permission to testify about the conversation to a grand jury investigating the leak in 2003, Newsweek reported.

A federal judge ordered Mr. Cooper, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, to testify and reveal their confidential sources. Last week, Mr. Cooper avoided a jail sentence for contempt of court by agreeing to testify in the case. Miss Miller refused to testify and was jailed.

It is illegal to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

Mr. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about Mrs. Plame. “I didn’t know her name. I didn’t leak her name,” he told CNN last year when asked whether he had had anything to do with the leak.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been leading a two-year investigation into the leak amid questions about whether it came from the White House as part of an attempt to discredit Mr. Wilson after he contradicted President Bush’s assertions about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times saying he had been sent by the CIA in 2002 to investigate the Bush administration’s statement that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. Mr. Wilson said he found no evidence to support the claim.

Top 10 list

Republican Florida Senate President Tom Lee has a reputation for being deliberate, logical and more than just a little wonkish, the St. Petersburg Times reports.

So it was surprising when he began his speech to the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club last week with a David Lettermanesque list of the top 10 signs you’re a Republican candidate for governor, reporter Carrie Johnson said. For example:

9: The St. Petersburg Times editorial board decides you’re directly related to Satan.

6: You think the Rev. Jerry Falwell is a fun guy to hang out with.

1: “Four words,” Mr. Lee said, grinning. “Good afternoon, Tiger Bay.”

As the laughter subsided, Mr. Lee launched into a discussion of his candidacy for state chief financial officer.

Church people

“As if mouthy Howard Dean didn’t have enough troubles, now comes a left-leaning evangelical, much in demand by the Democratic Party, telling the party boss to shut up about religion,” Paul Bedard writes in the Washington Whispers column of U.S. News & World Report.

“’Dean doesn’t understand religion very much,’ says Jim Wallis, who has advised many Democratic leaders. He meets with Dean this week as part of the chairman’s effort to woo the church-going crowd,” Mr. Bedard said.

“Now promoting his book ’God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It,’ Wallis says he’ll tell Dean not to fake it on religion. ’The worst thing people could do is be inauthentic,’ he says.”

No filibuster

Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted yesterday that there will be no filibuster of the next Supreme Court nominee.

“Every Republican is united around this fact — we’re going to give the nominee an up-or-down vote [though] every Republican may not vote for this person,” the South Carolina Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Mr. Graham was a member of the “Gang of 14” senators who struck a deal that, among other things, restricts judicial filibusters to “extraordinary circumstances.”

• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.