Inside Politics

Opposition party

“It’s a civil war in Washington. The combatants have an eye-for-an-eye mentality. The partisanship is heated and nasty,” New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin writes.

“Republicans versus Democrats? Nah. This one pits the media against the White House.

“It’s a war the media can’t win, and shouldn’t wage,” Mr. Goodwin said.

“The intense grilling that White House reporters inflicted on presidential spokesman Scott McClellan Monday over whether political guru Karl Rove leaked the name of a CIA operative was no ordinary give-and-take. It was a hostile hectoring that revealed much of the mainstream press for what it has become: the opposition party.

“Forget fairness, or even the pretense of it. With one of its own locked up — Judith Miller of The New York Times — much of the Beltway gang has declared war on the White House.

“Reporters apparently have decided Democrats aren’t up to the job. Can’t blame them. With Dems reduced to Howard Dean’s rants and Hillary Clinton’s juvenile jab that President Bush looks like Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, somebody has to offer a substantive alternative. The press has volunteered.

“That the mainstream media are basically liberals with press passes has been documented by virtually every study that measures reporters’ political identification and issue positions. But bias has now slopped over into blatant opposition, a stance the media will regret. Instead of providing unvarnished facts obtained by aggressive but fair-minded reporting, the media will be reduced to providing comfort food to ideological comrades.”

Telling the truth

“Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove’s head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we’d say the White House political guru deserves a prize — perhaps the next iteration of the ’Truth-Telling’ award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud,” the Wall Street Journal says in an editorial.

“For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real ’whistleblower’ in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility. He’s the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a whistleblower, but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.”

Ugly spin

“The lawyer for top White House adviser Karl Rove says that Time reporter Matthew Cooper ’burned’ Rove after a conversation between the two men concerning former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s fact-finding mission to Niger and the role Wilson’s wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, played in arranging that trip,” Byron York writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).

“Nevertheless, attorney Robert Luskin says Rove long ago gave his permission for all reporters, including Cooper, to tell prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about their conversations with Rove.

“In an interview with National Review Online, Luskin compared the contents of a July 11, 2003, internal Time e-mail written by Cooper with the wording of a story Cooper co-wrote a few days later. ’By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,’ Luskin said of Cooper. ’If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.’”

Unlikely nominee

“Though he defended Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against conservative critics, President Bush now appears highly unlikely to nominate Gonzales to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor,” Fred Barnes writes at the Weekly Standard Web site (www.weeklystandard.com).

“Nor is Gonzales expected to be chosen to fill a second vacancy on the high court should Chief Justice William Rehnquist or another justice step down in the near future,” Mr. Barnes said.

“The president, of course, could change his mind and pick Gonzales. But a better bet now is that he will choose a woman, an option recommended by first lady Laura Bush. Judge Edith Brown Clement of the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals is considered a possibility. Bush, who met with Senate leaders [Tuesday] to discuss the court vacancy, is expected to announce a nominee by the end of July.

“It is unclear how seriously the president ever regarded Gonzales as a potential court choice or if he was steered away from Gonzales at the urging of conservatives who want Bush to move the court to the right in its judicial philosophy. But the president is believed to have had reasons for not picking Gonzales all along.

“One is that he just installed Gonzales in the AG job, one of the top four Cabinet posts, a few months ago. Having already rewarded Gonzales with a promotion, he doesn’t owe him another one. The elevation to head the Justice Department reflected Bush’s great admiration for Gonzales, who had been chief White House counsel.

“Another reason is that Gonzales hasn’t proven himself yet in the AG job. He was confirmed, after a Senate fight, in January. It would be out of character for Bush to move Gonzales to a higher position before he had a chance to develop a strong record at Justice.

“And one more reason is that the president doesn’t need to name Gonzales to the Supreme Court to woo the Hispanic vote further. At least Bush doesn’t think so. He is said to feel that his commitment to advancement of Hispanics is clear. His share of the Hispanic vote jumped from 35 percent in 2000 to an estimated 42 percent in 2004.”

McCain’s cameo

“What is Sen. John McCain doing in a movie as mangy and raunchy as ’Wedding Crashers’? MSNBC film critic John Hartl writes at msn.com.

“Just so he can share a scene with Christopher Walken? Or is this an early hint of his next presidential campaign — perhaps an attempt to cross over and court racy-comedy fans, like Richard Nixon’s ’sock it to me’ appearance on ’Laugh-In’?” Mr. Hartl asked.

“McCain appears for only a few seconds, apparently playing himself (as does James Carville), while Walken is cast as a fictional secretary of the Treasury. The Washington Monument also makes a couple of appearances that seem just as pointless. Although the movie is set in Washington, D.C., much of it could have been set in any place that attracts the rich and idle.”

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