Just posted these musings on one of the threads where people are freaking out about the Gallup poll of (according to one poster) ADULTS (not registered or likely voters) showing Bush 51/Kerry 47.
My bottom line: it's key to remember that Clarke's testimony was devastating not as a book (remember how useful, but undevastating, the O'Neill/Siskind revelations were), nor as whistle-blowing move (remember how salutary, but undevastating the Rand Beers defection was), but as testimony. Sworn. Before a commission that now has to sort out the truth of the matter.
Unrebutted, the Clarke testimony would have been devastating. So the White House has spent 8 days hitting back with everything it has got. They got the polarization, and the freeze in the polls, that they wanted, but by calling "battle stations" on Clarke, they have permanently alienated the commission as well as anyone in the media not named Charles Krauthammer or Mark Steyn.
Sure, Mr. and Mrs. America don't notice when the administration puts out contradictory stories and engages in character assassination to rebut criticism: but the key swing members of the 9/11 commission (Kean, Gorton, Kerrey) do, as do the wives who are urging them on and the reporters who will be filtering their findings.
As a result the Administration has traded stasis in the polls now for more of a problem in July when the commission reports not only that they fucked up, but that they lied about it. And you know what they say about the coverup being worse than the crime. And since this coverup is of a piece with the "big lie" strategy on Medicare, WMD, what have you, its exposure is multiply devastating.
Also, many GOPartisans who are currently crouching with their heads between their knees and hands over their eyes will be looking differently at the Administration forever more. It takes months before bad news of this magnitude--"they fucked up, they lied to you, you overlooked it because you wanted to believe"--can really be processed.
Finally, even though this week has hurt Bush's perceived competence on the "War on Terror," it has been a discussion of that war, a set of issues framed to put his attitude in a good light. THe real test will come when the economy comes to the fore as an issue (as it will) and people feel more legitimated to support Kerry not seeing him and Democrats generally any longer as necessarily any worse than the Republicans on security.
Now, pauldean responded to the above by writing: "You don't really think ... that the commission is really going to come to the conclusion that "Bush fucked up, and lied about it" do you? They will have a completely toothless conclusion that both Bush and Clinton administrations could have done more to apprehend/kill OBL, and that failures in communication between WH and CIA/FBI/NSC early in 2001 were a "systems" problem, not negligence. Mark my words."
Well, pauldean: again, it's the testimony ...
The whole point of the Clarke testimony is that the commission has to deal with it. It's testimony. Sworn. Don't fall into the trap that the Administration is setting up of spinning Clarke's pov as "a book"--it may be that, but it is also sworn testimony.
The administration can turn the media coverage into a he said / she said game. That will help Rethug Drudge addicts sleep at night. But the commission is charged with adjudicating precisely what went on. That is exactly their mission. That's why Clarke testified, and why they want Condi to testify, and why it looks so bad that she hasn't.
This is also why the various "his testimonies don't add up" gambits are such disasters for the GOP. The more the Rethugs do to shine the spotlight on Clarke's really quite consistent pov, the more they force all the commission members to account for that consistency (not just for his latest, harshest criticisms).
The Rethug hacks on the committee can sputter all they want, but in the end "he wanted to sell a book" just isn't going to be in the majority report.
See what I mean? If the Admin had just quietly rebutted Clarke Andy Card style, and put Condi up there to take her medicine, they might have had a shot at salvaging the courtly "next time do better" that you envisage.
But by feeding the firestorm, they've ensured that every reporter will immediately turn their copy of the report to see its account of Clarke's briefings, check that account against the record, and see if the report holds water. For which reason it will. For which reason Bush better beware.