Who’s The Good Guy?

Atrios throws down the gauntlet:

… there’s also one more person who could end this – the senior administration official who pointed his finger at two White House officials in the WaPo article 8 days ago.

Oh yes, indeed. Let the games begin.

Many assume that it’s Tenet for a variety of reasons, many of which are very compelling.

But, I think it’s somebody else. Somebody who has voiced concerns in the past about the political operation of the White House. Somebody who expressed alarm in Ron Suskind’s seminal Esquire article that Karl Rove would have unfettered power with George W. Bush after the resignation of Karen Hughes:

“I’ll need designees, people trusted by the president that I can elevate for various needs to balance against Karl. . . . They are going to have to really step up, but it won’t be easy. Karl is a formidable adversary.”

That, of course, was Andy Card.

Someone else in the same article went on to say:

“But many of us feel it’s our duty—our obligation as Americans—to get the word out that, certainly in domestic policy, there has been almost no meaningful consideration of any real issues. It’s just kids on Big Wheels who talk politics and know nothing. It’s depressing. Domestic Policy Council meetings are a farce. This leaves shoot-from-the-hip political calculations—mostly from Karl’s shop—to triumph by default. No one balances Karl. Forget it. That was Andy’s cry for help.”

In fact, if you go back and read the entire article, you find that there were a number of White House officials who said things like:

“It’s an amazing moment. Karl just went from prime minister to king. Amazing . . . and a little scary. Now no one will speak candidly about him or take him on or contradict him. Pure power, no real accountability. It’s just ‘listen to Karl and everything will work out.’ . . . That may go for the president, too.”

In his amazing article Susskind said:

They [Rove’s friends] heard that I was writing about Karl Rove, seeking to contextualize his role as a senior adviser in the Bush White House, and they began calling, some anonymously, some not, saying that they wanted to help and leaving phone numbers. The calls from members of the White House staff were solemn, serious. Their concern was not only about politics, they said, not simply about Karl pulling the president further to the right. It went deeper; it was about this administration’s ability to focus on the substance of governing—issues like the economy and social security and education and health care—as opposed to its clear political acumen, its ability to win and enhance power. And so it seemed that each time I made an inquiry about Karl Rove, I received in return a top-to-bottom critique of the White House’s basic functions, so profound is Rove’s influence.

So, who knows? But, it does seem entirely possible that rather than this being a purely political turf war between the Neocons and the CIA (as is being promoted with the idea that Tenet was the one who blew the whistle on the Plame leak operation) that the “Senior Administration Official” does come from the White House and is one of those who have been sitting on their disgust at the total domination of politics over governance.