[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12236-12237]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      VIETNAM, WATERGATE AND ROVE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 20, 2006

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I bring to my colleagues' attention the 
following column written by Michael Barone. As Mr. Barone shows, the 
joint efforts of the so-called mainstream media and the political Left 
to examine current events through the prism of Vietnam and Watergate 
are--once again--sadly off base.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2006]

                      Vietnam, Watergate and Rove

                          (By Michael Barone)

       It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current 
     events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, 
     the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the 
     California 50th District special election--breakthrough that 
     would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald 
     Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 
     1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, 
     just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.
       Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu 
     Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished 
     forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available to gloat 
     over American setbacks or our allies' defeat, as the leaders 
     of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam did.
       Third, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that 
     he would not seek an indictment of Karl Rove. The leftward 
     blogosphere had Mr. Rove pegged for the role of Bob Haldeman 
     and John Ehrlichman. Theories were spun about plea bargains 
     that would implicate Vice President Dick Cheney. Talk of 
     impeachment was in the air. But it turns out that history 
     doesn't repeat itself. George W. Bush, whether you like it or 
     not, is not a second Richard Nixon.
       It is hard in retrospect to understand why the left put so 
     much psychic energy into the notion that Mr. Rove would be 
     indicted. He certainly was an important target. No one in 
     American history has been as powerful an aide to a president, 
     both on politics and on public policy, as Karl Rove. Only 
     Robert Kennedy in his brother's administration and Hamilton 
     Jordan in Jimmy Carter's come close, and neither was as 
     involved in electoral politics as Mr. Rove has been.
       Still, it was clear early on that the likelihood that Mr. 
     Rove violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was 
     near zero. Under the law, the agent whose name was disclosed 
     would have had to have served overseas within the preceding 
     five years (Valerie Plame, according to her husband's book, 
     had been stationed in the U.S. since 1997), and Mr. Rove 
     would have had to know that she was undercover (not very 
     likely). The left enjoyed raising an issue on which, for 
     once, it could charge that a Republican administration had 
     undermined national security. But that rang hollow when the 
     left gleefully seized on the New York Times' disclosure of 
     NSA surveillance of phone calls from suspected al Qaeda 
     operatives abroad to persons in the U.S.
       In all this a key role was played by the press. Cries went 
     up early for the appointment of a special prosecutor: Patrick 
     Fitzgerald would be another Archibald Cox or Leon Jaworski. 
     Eager to bring down another Republican administration, the 
     editorialists of the New York Times evidently failed to 
     realize that the case could not be pursued without asking 
     reporters to reveal the names of sources who had been 
     promised confidentiality. America's newsrooms are populated 
     largely by liberals who regard the Vietnam and Watergate 
     stories as the great achievements of their profession. The 
     peak of their ambition is to achieve the fame and wealth of 
     great reporters like David Halberstam and Bob Woodward. But 
     this time it was not Republican administration officials who 
     went to prison. It was Judith Miller, then of the New York 
     Times itself.
       Interestingly, Bob Woodward himself contradicted Mr. 
     Fitzgerald's statement, made the day that he announced the 
     one indictment he has obtained, of former vice presidential 
     chief of staff Scooter Libby, that Mr. Libby was the first to 
     disclose Ms. Plame's name to a reporter. The press reaction 
     was to turn on Mr. Woodward, who has been covering this 
     administration as a new story rather than as a reprise of 
     Vietnam and Watergate.
       Historians may regard it as a curious thing that the left 
     and the press have been so determined to fit current events 
     into templates based on events that occurred 30 to 40 years 
     ago. The people who effectively framed the issues raised by 
     Vietnam and Watergate did something like the opposite; they 
     insisted that Vietnam was not a reprise of World War II or 
     Korea and that Watergate was something different from the 
     operations J. Edgar Hoover conducted for Franklin Roosevelt 
     or John Kennedy. Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early 
     '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' 
     faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists 
     since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they 
     have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the 
     wrong party is in office.
       That belief has its perils for journalism, as the 
     Fitzgerald investigation has shown. The peril that the press 
     may find itself in the hot seat, but even more the peril that 
     it will get the story wrong. The visible slavering over the 
     prospect of a Rove indictment is just another item in the 
     list of reasons why the credibility of the ``mainstream 
     media'' has been plunging. There's also a peril for the 
     political left. Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs 
     for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for 
     America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the

[[Page 12237]]

     world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition 
     and much of the press have sought not just to defeat 
     administrations but to delegitimize them. The pursuit of Karl 
     Rove by the left and the press has been just the latest 
     episode in the attempted criminalization of political 
     differences. Is there any hope that it might turn out to be 
     the last?

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