Watching Mike Wallace and Bob Woodward do their piece of well-practiced, expertly edited theatre tonight, I was struck by how much glee they seemed to take in doing it. Media whores the CBS guys certainly are, but it sounds as if they've been waiting four years for this chance to stick it to W. and the neocons. Think of all the belly crawling they have done since Dec. 2000!
And imagine Woodward's frame of mind! His first book was fawning in its praise of "Bush at War" -- practically an "as told to" ghost-written for W. puff piece -- I know it was an enormous disappointment to me, coming from one of the heroes of the Watergate story. Yet now it turns out he was fawning like a fox. He must be pleased to be able to put plan B into action. He couldn't have known he would get the chance.
Because behind the story, enabling it, looms the shadow of Colin Powell. The NY Times is running a story right now that says Powell must have green-lighted these damaging revelations. I'm reminded of Henry Kissinger, another SOS who survived his president's downfall and went merrily on, unscathed by the administration's crimes. He served in the Ford administration and despite noises from Chileans who want him for war crimes, he remains influential and unreproved to this day.
The news is that Powell apparently has decided Iraq will be George Bush's Vietnam. Consider that a flat denial of Woodward's stories by Powell would undo them, most likely. I doubt CBS would have dared air this 60 minutes unless they knew Powell would not challenge the substance of it. Watch: no such denial will be forthcoming.
Let Condi deny it all. She's going down.
Powell, on the other hand, will live to be rich and famous and powerful another day. It will be interesting to see exactly how and when. Kerry and even Dean routinely praised Powell's wisdom, rather than dwell on his shameful lies to the U.N. He's far from finished and may not even be entirely out of it during a Democratic administration.
In saving himself this way, he's admitted something no other administration member has admitted so far:
Bush is toast. Re-election isn't going to work out. Iraq is beyond the pale and can't be fixed by November. There will be more and more revelations if necessary as insiders who have been biding their time become more emboldened, and as the election approaches. Kerry's record is adequate to qualify him to challenge Bush, and anyway he hardly needs to try -- his case is being made for him every day.
I think the Woodward book, and the 60 minutes interview, is not so much cause as effect. Richard Clarke, and Bremer's incompetence in Iraq lately, have played much more causitive roles in W.'s perfect storm.
But we may well look back on this 60 minutes interview as the moment when the establishment media whores felt emboldened to weigh in. The moment at which the sharks smelled blood in the water and struck. Cowards they are, all of them, but when they smell blood, they do what they do. And then suddenly they are all feeding.
And boy is it about time.