George Bush May Be Distancing Himself From Karl Rove

Is President George Bush starting to put some distance between himself and Karl Rove?
If this article in the New York Daily News is any indication, it sure sounds that way:

WASHINGTON – An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

“He made his displeasure known to Karl,” a presidential counselor told The News. “He made his life miserable about this.”

Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President’s rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.

A couple of things immediately come to mind:

1. If consistency matters (and it doesn’t much in 21st-century politics) then the media and Bush’s foes could have a field day given Bush’s previous statements about this leak scandal and not tolerating leakers. So he knew all along when he was talking to reporters? (Oh, the shock of it…)
2. We’ve truly been WAITING for this shoe to drop. If you believe reports, Rove is in deep doo-doo — and we don’t mean the singing chorus kind. For political survival Bush would have to put some distance between himself and Rove.
3. This story suggests, more than ever before, that there is a real likelihood that Rove will be indicted in the Plamegate scandal very soon. A WARNING again that the only person who knows is the special prosecutor. But, if Rove wasn’t in legal peril, you wouldn’t see this story.

Note that the back of the hand to Rove’s face via the Daily News is coupled with a loving pat on the back (a classic “codependent” relationship?):

“Karl is fighting for his life,” the official added, “but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that.”

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

And then there’s this — which speaks volumes about ethical standards (or lack of them) in the White House and where they start:

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

“Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way,” the source said.

So where does all this start? At the top.

Josh Marshall offers this important tidbit which puts this into perspective. It’s the old saying “consider the source” — but this time the journalistic source:

Now, one other detail about this piece. It runs a few hundred words. But the most important two are probably these: Thomas DeFrank.

DeFrank’s the byline and he’s the Daily News DC Bureau Chief. DeFrank has a unique relationship to the Bush world, particularly to the older generation. He cowrote James Baker’s diplomatic autobiography The Politics of Diplomacy, for instance. Back in the summer of 2001, The Weekly Standard suggested he’d actually been in the running to be chief Pentagon spokesman, before the job went to Tori Clarke.

I’m not including this background information to suggest that DeFrank is in the tank for the Bush crowd. Indeed, I have the sense that the relationship has become more strained or perhaps attenuated over the last few years. I add these details because the nature of DeFrank’s access is unique in Washington. And this article carries more weight than it would with another byline.

And is the White House hotly denying this? Insisting it’s all a pack of lies? No, writes Think Progress:

A reporter who attended the White House gaggle this morning reported that McClellan offered a shifty response:

In response to a question about a story in the “New York Daily News� which reported that the president was angry with Karl Rove in 2003 over his role in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name as a CIA operative, McClellan would only say that he would not comment on an ongoing investigation. McClellan went on to say that he challenges the overall accuracy of the story. When pressed on giving an answer to why he challenges the accuracy of the story, McClellan answered again that he would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

If you cut away all the political ballet you have this:

–Karl Rove could be indicted.
–George W. Bush wants some distance.
–But he’s grateful for what Karl Rove has done for him (and probably hoping Rove limits what he says about it in the future).
–Bush is trying to detach himself from the scandal.
–If this story is true, then Bush knew all along that Rove was involved.

Of course, if Rove is indicted and this story has “legs” — meaning follow-up questions and an attempt to flesh this out by finding more sources who can confirm Bush’s attitude — then some will start asking whether Bush ordered it.

You can see this story as the first attempt to get it on the record that Bush didn’t order it and was upset when he found out about it (but not apparently on reasons of national security or the political morality of it).

See today’s other posts on Plamegate here and here.

HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION OF EXCERPTS OF OTHER VOICES COMMENTING ON THIS STORY:
–Firedog Lake:”Running like rats from a sinking ship, and the indictments haven’t even hit yet.
–Americablog:”So, it wasn’t what they did that made Bush angry. It was how they did it. Bush had no problem sacrificing national security for smear politics. That should make us all feel safer.”
–Kevin Drum:”If this is true — and it’s credited to multiple sources — then Rove knew exactly what he was doing, Bush knew what Rove was doing, and Rove flatly lied to the grand jury about it.”
–The Carpetbagger:

First, I’m skeptical about Bush’s alleged “anger.” The president reportedly learned that his top political aide exposed an undercover CIA agent and was responsible for a criminal investigation of the White House. Bush “made his displeasure known”? What does that mean? As far as I can tell, Rove never suffered in any way for his role. Not only was he not demoted, he was actually promoted. No lost influence, no lost power.

Bush made Rove’s life “miserable about this”? Considering the fact that Bush asked Rove to plot out his re-election campaign right around this time, I find the claim hard to believe.

--Anonymous Liberal:
So if this new story is true–Rove “came clean” to Bush in 2003–and …. doesn’t that mean that Bush lied to Fitzgerald in 2004? Or does this excerpt merely reference what Bush told Fitzgerald about his state of knowledge prior to Rove coming clean?”
–Billmon gives you McClellan’s actual ORIGINAL STATEMENTS about Bush and Karl Rove, then writes:

Assuming the Daily News is right — always problematic — then the question is whether what Dubya told the prosecutor was any closer to the truth than what he told the American people. He wasn’t interviewed under oath, so maybe perjury isn’t the operative word here, but if Shrub lied to Fitzgerald as glibly as he lied in the above statements, then his ghost and Tricky Dick’s ghost someday may have the chance to swap stories — in hell — about what it feels like to be an unindicted co-conspirator.

–Blogenlust:

Think about what this means: The President of the United States has been complicit in preventing senior members of his administration from being brought to justice for the vengeful outing of an undercover CIA agent as retribution against someone who dared to question the hollow rationale for an unnecessary war.

If you take a break from basking in the sweet, sweet schadenfreude, you realize that the magnitude of what happened is almost too big to comprehend.

–Steve Clemmons:

What seems clear is that Bush was disturbed by his staff’s behavior and did nothing at that point. He told the nation he would fire any staff involved — and then did nothing other than privately scold Karl Rove.

The other fascinating revelation is that the act of revealing Plame’s identity does not seem to be part of Bush’s irritation. It was getting caught, the “ham-handedness” of the effort. Bush seems not to have been angered by the revelation of Plame’s covert CIA role. We were at war. Bush’s dad was the former Director of the CIA. And Bush only cared that his black-bag guys screwed up and got caught.

–Brad Blog:

We’re told that CNN is reporting — to the surprise of absolutely nobody — a denial by the White House of the entire story. We’ve yet to see the specifics of that denial, but we can well imagine it, and we’ve all learned that White House denials at this point are completely meaningless.

More newsworthy, however, is that David Corn points out that the Daily News report now seems to place Bush smack-dab in the middle of classic “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” scandal. You know, of the type that brought down Nixon and damn-near brought down Clinton…

(TMV NOTES: Re-read what Josh Marshall says above about the writer of this piece. It sounds like someone got a message out there, isn’t happy with what the response is and the questions that are now being raised, and is trying to pull it back — knowing full well that part of the desired message will stay out there…that Bush was angry and didn’t order it.)
–Read more reaction to this story at Memeorandum.