Michael Kinsley's NY Times editorial today conflating President Clinton's lies with Scooter Libby's illustrates a trap much more insidious than a so-called "Perjury Trap" that he feels poor Scooter shouldn't have faced; it is the Punditry Trap, in which a journalist must equate two sets of official misconduct, no matter how unequal their intent or consequence, in order to prove that his or her journalism is "fair and balanced".
So when Mr. Libby was questioned by federal investigators pursuing the leaks, he too was caught in a perjury trap. He could either tell the truth, thereby implicating colleagues and very possibly himself, in leaking classified security information (the identity of Mr. Wilson’s wife), or he could lie. In either case he would be breaking the law or admitting to having done so, and in either case he could have gone to prison. Mr. Libby, like Mr. Clinton, made the wrong choice.
So in Kinsley's world, President Clinton, who tried to conceal a legal blowjob between consenting adults to avoid embarrassment to himself and his family, was in a morally equivalent position to Libby, who covered up the illegal screwing of America and Iraq by the Vice-President that has led to the death or disfigurement of at least 100,000 people and cost the American taxpayer half a trillion dollars and counting.
Not!
Kinsey could have told the truth about the Executive Branch criminals, and how so-called journalists like the Times' own Judith Miller repeated the administrations' lies on the front pages of the newspaper, but to do so would admit his colleagues' culpability in leading our country into a foolhardy and criminal war of aggression. Instead, he uses the occasion of Bush's nonsensical preemption of Libby's jail sentence to focus on the trivial, inside-baseball point that modern journalists who are willing to publish anonymous propaganda leaks from the government maybe shouldn't do it anymore. Well, doh!
Mr. Libby will escape prison, but he won’t get away scot-free either. He faces a fine of $250,000 and two years of probation, and if he was thinking of cashing in big on K Street like so many of his administration colleagues, he had better think again.
No, Mr. Kinsey had better think again. He's deluding himself when he states that Libby faces meaningful punishment because he must pay a fine and remain technically a felon (at least until a full pardon is issued by either Mr. Bush or the next Republican president). To the contrary, by covering up for the Vice President, Libby will certainly "cash-in" and become a wealthy man thanks to the financial support of the right-wing think tanks, oilmen, international construction companies and military contracting industries who have profited so mightily from his bosses' despicable policies. Many other diarists here on Kos have pointed out the absurd situation the commutation has created for Libby's so-called probation.
The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, followed this commonsense logic straight into a First Amendment buzz saw. News organizations that insisted on the need to get to the bottom of the leak also insisted that no journalist should have to supply information to this investigation.
The First Amedment "buzz-saw" that Kinsley says Patrick Fitzgerald ran into would not have existed had the President been true to his word and investigated and punished the leakers in his administration. Of course if he had fingered Richard Armitage, Colin Powell would have retaliated by revealing that the plan to leak originated in the the office of the Vice President. And if he had fingered Rove, Rove would have probably have conspired with Cheney bump him off.
I am pretty sick of the Times and David Brooks and nonsense like this editorial, but old habits like reading the Grey Lady are awfully hard to break.