The Smirking Chimp

By George E. Condon Jr., San Diego Union Tribune

WASHINGTON – There is a simple explanation for the withering counterattack mounted this week against the man who was President Bush's top adviser on terrorism. For a self-proclaimed "war president" whose campaign is built on his conduct of the war against terrorism, Bush knows that Richard Clarke's criticism is a dagger aimed at his political heart.

The ferocious White House assault is proof that Republican strategists appreciate the seriousness of the moment and are determined to crush the threat as quickly and convincingly as possible.

Deploying everybody from the vice president to the first lady to blanket the airwaves with rebuttals, the administration has thrown everything at Clarke, accusing him of hypocrisy, partisan motives, faulty memory, sour grapes and self-aggrandizement.

That assault on Clarke continued yesterday when Republican members of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States challenged the credibility and motives of the man who served under every president since Ronald Reagan.

Coupled with his "outing" by the White House as the anonymous aide who praised Bush in a 2002 background briefing for reporters, Clarke's grilling left the president's supporters hoping that they had weathered the furor triggered by Clarke's book and much-publicized appearance on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday.

"There has been damage. But by the end of the week, it will blow over," said Charlie Black, a senior Republican adviser to Bush's campaign. "We'll move on to something else."

Conservative strategist Keith Appell acknowledged that Clarke's "60 Minutes" appearance "really pushed some buttons at the White House" where there is what he called "a deep sense of betrayal" that a staffer would turn on the president.

"They want to portray the president – and rightly so – as someone we can trust in handling the war on terrorism," he said, expressing optimism the 9/11 hearings proved that Clarke's charges have failed to gain traction.

But both in his many television appearances and under tough questioning from the 9/11 panel, Clarke more than held his own. He never wavered from his biting critique, suggesting that the potential for lasting political damage to the president's re-election hopes is far from extinguished.

"This is not going away," said Stephen Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University.

"This is a very dangerous moment for Bush because this goes right to the heart of his strength," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of a nonpartisan political newsletter.

"If, in fact, the war against terrorism was handled poorly, if there were misjudgments, if the president never really paid enough attention to the war against terrorism because he was paying attention to Saddam Hussein, this could pull the rug right out from under the president," he said.

Stephen Hess, who has been a respected observer of Washington ever since his days on the White House staffs of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, said the first three days of this week featured the most ferocious White House counter-attack he has ever seen.

In part, he said, that is because Clarke's charges "are quite central to the probity and integrity and honesty (of the White House) but also to the theme of why they should be re-elected."

That furor even infected the 9/11 commission, with some commissioners seemingly more interested in using Clarke to score political points for their parties than dispassionately assessing the lessons of Sept. 11.

Most guilty of this on the panel were Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste and Republican James Thompson, the former governor of Illinois. Neither seemed willing to rise above partisanship when facing Clarke.

Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and governor, seemed amused by the attacks on Clarke, telling him, "You're just caught up in one of those moments."

Clarke's credibility most likely did take a hit when Thompson grilled him on the contrast between his current criticisms and his praise for Bush in that background briefing two years ago.

But it is Clarke's critique that could prove his most enduring contribution to the campaign and could, in the end, prove the most threatening to Bush's re-election. That is, Clarke's self-described "strident" insistence that Bush's obsession with Hussein and the decision to go to war in Iraq "undermined the war on terrorism."

Others have made that charge – most notably several of the Democratic presidential contenders. But none did it with the authority of Clarke. And it now seems much more likely voters will be asked to choose between the president's insistence that the Iraq war was a part of the war against terrorism, and Sen. John Kerry's contention that it was, instead, a distraction from the threat of al-Qaeda.

Shorter term, Clarke's book rescued Kerry from what had been his worst week since clinching the nomination. Republicans had been gleeful at the attention focused on his tortured explanation that he had voted both for and against a funding bill for the war.

"Bush had regained momentum that was lost during the Democratic primaries. . . . Polls showed Bush pulling back ahead. The momentum was coming back and this stopped the momentum," Appell said.

"It was an unfortunate distraction," Black said. "We had a couple of good weeks and now we're off track and having to foul off these pitches. It's just unfortunate."

© Copyright 2004 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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