Like many in these parts, I'm a bit nervous that without any crack from the administration, news from Fitzgerald's investigation, or new bombshell revelations, the Rove/Plame story will get bumped off the front burner by the next terror attack, shark attack, or Tom Cruise outburst. This administration has weathered so many storms, outlasted so many egregious scandals, that I'm not sure anything short of Cheney screwing the corpse of a young boy on live TV would really generate the appropriate level of outrage. (And Rush, I'm sure, would even spin that as showing the VP's "fun side".)
There are ways for Democrats (and journalists) to keep this fresh: my favorite is to start aggressively asking the non-hack Republican Senators like Warner, McCain, Hagel and Graham what they think of Ken Mehlman's talking points and the rantings of the Noise Machine. But there's another card yet to be played, and I'd love to know why not.
Bring out Valerie Plame.
Her cover has been blown. Her name has been smeared, and as Josh Marshall has noted, the right wing has smeared her as "simultaneously a glorified secretary and also a political operator scheming to upend the president's drive to war by sending her husband on a mission to Niger."
Stories only capture the public imagination when there's an obvious hero and villain. The Republicans are trying to blur those lines, even going as far as suggesting that Rove is the heroic "whistleblower" here and that Wilson, or Matt Cooper, is the guy in the black hat.
But Plame making the talk show rounds would end that in short order: here's an attractive, highly intelligent, obviously patriotic woman who was doing literally some of the most important work in the world--trying to stop WMDs from falling into terrorist hands. She would be an incredibly compelling protagonist, putting a human face on a story that could easily get swamped in legal parsings and moral shadings.
So why haven't we seen her? Maybe it has something to do with CIA restrictions on talking about her work. But there has to be a way around that: Robert Baer and others, including Plame's friend Larry Johnson, have spoken out. And I assume she's no longer active in any capacity, with her face and name exposed.
Perhaps it's as simple as not wanting her privacy, and that of her children, to be further violated. But patriotism IMO outweighs such considerations.
Would love to hear anybody's insights about this.