Dark week looms for Bush
2005-10-30 08:02
Jocelyne Zablit
Washington - President George W Bush faces a rocky road to political redemption after the indictment of a top White House aide on perjury and other charges capped one of the worst weeks for the US leader.
The charges against I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, vice president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, came just a day after Harriet Miers, Bush's nominee, withdrew her nomination for a Supreme Court place and the number of US military dead in Iraq topped 2 000.
Bush's approval ratings have been at an all-time low for weeks.
The president put a brave face on the White House crisis after the charges were made insisting he was focusing on his job.
"I got a job to do, and so do the people who work in the White House. We got a job to protect the American people, and that's what we'll continue working hard to do," Bush said.
But analysts say the president's job will become more difficult now.
"This is devastating to Bush in that it reminds the public of the disproved basis for a very unpopular war and reinforces the gathering view that the Republican party of government is characterized by corruption, cronyism and abuse of power," Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.
Libby was charged after a two year investigation by a special investigator into the illegal leaking of the identity of a CIA agent, whose husband is a vocal opponent of the Iraq war.
Honour of White House
Mann said Democrats were likely to use the case against Libby to remind Bush of his campaign pledge to "restore honour and dignity to the White House" after the scandal of Bill Clinton's presidency.
Observers said that about the only bright spot of the week for Bush was that his close adviser Karl Rove, dubbed "Bush's brain", had not been indicted - at least for now.
"The question today is, of course, what will happen to Karl Rove, who is closer to being a household name than Libby and would have been a much more serious setback for the president had he been indicted," said Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.
Hess noted that though Libby's indictment undoubtedly hurt the president, it could not be compared to scandals that have rocked previous administrations.
"This is a scandal, but in the context of major past second-term scandals, it's not a big one," he said.
"It's not Iran-Contra, it's not Monicagate and it's not going to lead to the impeachment of the president or the removal of the president."
Mislead the public
The grand jury investigation that led to Libby's indictment on two counts of perjury, two of making false statements and one of obstruction of justice came out of the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
The CIA officer's cover was blown in a newspaper column by a conservative commentator that appeared shortly after her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, publicly questioned the intelligence used by the Bush administration for the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Critics say the indictment was proof of a concerted effort by top administration officials to mislead the public in the run-up to the Iraq war, and they questioned whether Bush could recover from the scandal.
"I very much doubt they will be able to repair the damage," said Tom De Luca, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York. "Once you lose credibility, it's almost impossible to get it back.
"I don't know if this is comparable to Watergate," he said, "but it seems to be exploding."
Eric Davis, a political science professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, predicted that Bush was likely to deflect criticism by quickly naming a replacement to Miers and focusing attention on other issues.
"The fastest way to refocus the agenda is with the Supreme Court nomination," he said.
- SAPA