Op-Ed columnist Harold Meyerson writes in tomorrow's
Washington Post about Karl Rove and his work on behalf of George Bush.
Meyerson cuts right to it - The real political and moral issue is that Karl Rove is George Bush's employee.
The buck stops where?
Meyerson is insistent in this piece that Bush needs to be held accountable and he needs to take action regarding his loyal employee, Karl Rove.
But the most important questions that the Rove case raises aren't for McClellan; they're for Bush himself. In his zeal to get to the bottom of this matter, and to terminate the employment of any administration official involved in the leak, has the president spoken to Rove about this matter since Sunday, when Newsweek broke the story of the Cooper-Rove conversation?
After all, on Sept. 30, 2003, Bush said, "If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take appropriate action." Presumably, by "appropriate action," the president didn't mean promoting the culprit to deputy chief of staff, Rove's title for the past six months.
Or did he? There's no basis to conclude that if Rove was the guy who outed Plame, he told his boss about it. But Rove was, and has always been, Bush's one indispensable aide precisely, though not only, because he would do whatever it took to advance his boss's interests, no matter the consequences to his intended targets or innocent bystanders. Though we can't be certain it was Rove who disclosed Plame's identity, we can be damned sure that if he did, it was all in a day's work on behalf of George W. Bush.
Bush needs to take responsibility for Rove's misdeeds and fire the man, or face the awareness that Bush's White House is a place run amuck by his amoral aide.