Engine Seizure

What a morning.

Instead of discussing the biggest story in town (in which he happens to be intimately involved) Russert spent almost the entire hour helping Louis Freeh smear Bill Clinton. This was after letting Condi Rice get away with saying, “we could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda…or we could take a bolder approach.” Too bad about the terrorism.

On ABC Joe Klein, George Will and Fahreed Zakaria might as well have been wearing powdered wigs and sniffing snuff with their pinkies raised as they rolled their eyes and knowingly pooh-poohed the leaking of classified information, deploring the wanton criminalization of politics that has taken place under King George’s reign.

Stephanopoulos, to his credit for once, actually reported the story everyone in Washington actually cares about and even got Joe DeGenova to admit that Fitzgerald not only should pursue charges if anybody in the white house lied to him — he had a duty to do so. Apparently, he and his ball and chain, Victoria Toensing, aren’t yet on the same page about Fitz — she said the other day that he had “lost it!” He’d “gone over the edge.!”

Steph also surprisingly called on the perfumed courtiers on their casual dismissal of powerful government officials outing undercover CIA operatives to cover-up their lies about the reasons for an illegal war of aggression. Perhaps he was stung by the fact that in order to join the Kewl Kidz he was forced to turn on his political mentor with all the breathless sanctimony of a born again drug addict while the kewl kidz now thinks its terribly droll that the powers that be play political games with national security. IOKIYAR, Stephie. Remember that.

I didn’t hear anybody mention this, and it’s big:

Even before testifying last week for the fourth time before a grand jury probing the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity, Bush senior adviser Rove and others at the White House had concluded that if indicted he would immediately resign or possibly go on unpaid leave, several legal and Administration sources familiar with the thinking told TIME.

Resignation is the much more likely scenario, they say. The same would apply to I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the Vice President’s chief of staff, who also faces a possible indictment. A former White House official says Rove’s break with Bush would have to be clean—no “giving advice from the sidelines”—for the sake of the Administration.

From, the way his lawyers are talking, they seem pretty convinced that Rove is likely to be indicted:

Rove’s defense team asserts that President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said.

Of course Rove will be giving his advice from the sidelines, but without him being on the spot, his power and influence will be a shadow of what it was. And frankly, I’m not sure if I’m more nervous at the idea of Karl Rove staying in the White House or leaving it. George W. Bush has had Karl Rove at his side for his entire political career. Every minute. It’s impossible to imagine him functioning without him.

George W. Bush is a creature of Karl Rove’s imagination. He invented him. I would bet money that Dick Cheney is no longer a trusted second in command. It looks like he and his little dog Scooter may have taken Turdblossom down with them. If Rove goes, for better or worse (and I don’t actually think it could be worse) the United States will effectively no longer have a president.

I wonder if James Baker is on call. He’s the loyal Texan the Bushes usually call to clean up their shit. If he’s not up for it this time it looks like Andrew Card or Ed Gillespie will be running the most powerful nation on earth for the next three years. Jesus.

Keep in mind that the political machine is also on the defensive from all directions — DeLay, Abramoff, Reed, Norquist, Frist even Lou Sheldon and James Dobson are now in the sights of federal prosecutors. And then there’s Ronnie Earle. The Harriet Miers crack-up may just be a preview. The top-down, centralized Republican machine is seizing up and it’s about to explode.

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