Well, it's been almost a week now, and the verdict is in: The usual smears and deceits aren't working this time.
Some of the administration's attempts to heap discredit on Richard Clarke have been comical, like Dick Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop." Uh, out of the loop? Your counterterrorism czar? If Clarke was indeed out of the loop, that would only have been because Cheney and his comrades demoted this Clinton-tainted public servant as one of their early acts in office. Subsequent events demonstrated that, just maybe, Clarke should have been in the loop. Not the best talking point.
Others have become tired, as stale as an aging Vegas comic's routine. Administration officials, their amen corner in the right-wing press, and the Republican members of the September 11 commission have all tried to assail Clarke's "motives" and accuse him of partisanship. But Clarke shot down the motive charge forcefully and effectively; as for partisanship, it is chiefly the GOP commissioners trying to carry the administration's water who look partisan.
Still other attacks have carried a more sinister tinge. The White House's release to FOX News of a previously background-only briefing that Clarke gave to reporters in 2002 -- retrospectively putting Clarke's remarks on the record with an eager and friendly propaganda outfit -- was an abominable hypocrisy. The most secretive White House in modern history has suddenly decided that this one particular piece of information deserves a wider and more open dissemination.
But none of it has worked. Partly this is because of Clarke himself. When the administration hit back at John DiIulio, the former director of its faith-based programs who said in an Esquire interview that the White House was being run by "Mayberry Machiavellis," DiIulio stood down. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill did a little better, but he, too, quickly issued a semi-recantation saying that he planned on voting for George W. Bush in the end. But Clarke has been imperturbable. As the White House has ratcheted up its attacks, Clarke has ratcheted right back.
Partly, also, it's that the political context has changed dramatically in the past two years. A lot of what Clarke says and writes in his book has been known. Newsweek ran an excellent package of articles in the summer of 2002 showing how specifically this administration had downgraded anti-terrorism activity. The package was devastating. But with a very few exceptions, the rest of the media just let it sit there. Worse, they accepted the administration's damage control at the time, like Condi Rice's infamous whopper about no one having any idea that terrorists might use airplanes as missiles. Back then, the media actually wanted us to believe that Bush was our Churchill, his "war cabinet" -- never has a phrase been so misused; calling this a war cabinet is like calling Mao's politburo a committee on cultural reform -- our modern-day equivalent of Stimson and Hull and Morgenthau and Biddle.
Yesterday afternoon, I got an e-mail from a source. It was an Associated Press story by Ted Bridis that moved across the wires -- guess when? -- in the summer of 2002. Here's the first sentence: "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions, officials say." A jaw-dropping sentence, and one whose factual assertion, it's worth mentioning, the White House didn't try to refute but attempted to justify on the grounds that no one cared about al-Qaeda at the time (no one obsessed with Iraq, that is). But, like the Newsweek package, it might as well have been whispered into a shoebox.
But Clarke's charging are sticking mostly because they hit the administration right where it lives -- and because they're true. This administration has always danced away from similar allegations in the past by smearing the allegers, yes, but also by its deft use of rhetoric that does two things: dodges the real question in a way that the administration hopes no one will notice and applies a layer of bravado that makes the words sound tough, certain, and sincere.
Bush's defense Thursday is a classic of the genre. "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of the government, to protect the American people," he said. Well, of course he would have. Who could possibly dispute that? The point is that he didn't know, and that the evidence is mounting -- check that; has mounted -- that there was a heck of a lot more he could have done to try to know.
Will the charges stick through to November? That depends in part on how intelligently John Kerry's campaign uses them. Kerry hasn't said much so far, which was smart, because when the papers are doing the bashing for you, you don't need to pile on. Bush is on his heels this week, but soon he'll start firing back. I sure hope Kerry spent the week watching Clarke closely.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
