Grump: The Beginning of the End for "W"?

The Grump must confess that he has not followed the Valerie Plame/Libby Lewis leak story in detail. But one thing the Grump recalls firmly is the absolutely unequivocal statement by George Bush shortly after the row started, to the effect that leaks were wrong and that if someone in his administration leaked something, well then he was going to bring the hammer down on them.

Now we hear the President's Press Secretary say, well, the President authorized the release of the information, and that since a document isn't classified if the President says it isn't classified, no wrongful leak of classified information ever took place.

This will not, the Grump thinks, play well in Peoria. The problem is that even though the "Pres says it's not classified so it's not classified" argument may hold water logically, it's too reminiscent of Clinton's fine parsing of words like "sex" and "is" when he got in a jam. Bush was asked about the Plame leak; he said, essentially, "it's wrong and when I find out who did it they'll get theirs." If he had been honest, he would have said, at the time, "I've decided that information could be released because it's important that the truth get out," not pretend that he didn't know about the leak.

The Grump says that this is going to hurt Bush, because this is what in college we used to call (for reasons that are lost to me now, as it doesn't make any sense) a "self-inhale." Like Bill and Monica, this isn't a situation created by Bush's enemies. And like Bill and Monica, it reveals something fundamental about the man's character, which, the Grump thinks, a lot of people who voted for Bush have been hoping against hope isn't what it now seems to be. Not quite caught dead in a lie, perhaps, but close enough to make those centrist Bush voters look back on the whole Iraq war buildup and ask: Was I duped? Loss of credibility with your supporters, the Grump thinks, is the beginning of the end.