Rove: Dead Man Walking

In the Washington Post today is a fascinating piece about life around the White House these days, and it is entirely consistent with what I've encountered in other similarly run organizations in which too much power is concentrated in too few hands. When those few are driven by a blend of ideological fanaticism and absolute lust for power, then when things go badly, there can only be denial left before the final collapse.

Some GOP officials outside the White House say they believe the president rejects the idea that there is anything fundamentally wrong with his presidency;

That's typical of the dry drunk, or of the religious fanatic suddenly confronted with absolute and irrefutable contradiction of his own undeniable truth. And with denial, there is silence.

At the White House and among its close allies, discussion about Rove's fate is verboten -- in part out of fear and in part out of ignorance about what his legal vulnerability actually is. No one in the White House wants to talk about an indictment. As another former official said, "No one wants to believe anything's going to happen." Nor do people easily discuss other staff changes. "Anyone who talks about that kind of stuff should be shot," said a third Republican with close ties to the White House.

Who, do you think, is forbidding this discussion, or is it simply understood because of the atmosphere of this White House? In Chimpie's world, there can be no bad news, nothing that cannot be lied out of, or spun, or just ignored, as he did yesterday in calling the Plamegate affair "background noise...chatter."

But that noise is the sound of the presidency crumbling, just like the World Trade Center towers collapsing suddenly within their own space, which is apt, since these motherfuckers so cynically and malevolently exploited that tragedy to consolidate their power and send this country into a pointless war for the profits of their criminal enterprise. When the steel structures of Rove and Libby melt under indictments, the glass houses of Chimpie and Cheney are going to implode majestically, leaving a stinking pile that will take years to clean away. But at least the nightmare will have begun to end, and perhaps this country will finally wake up to eradicate the demons of its 5-year sleep.