Cloud, minus a silver lining

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A couple of days ago, Shane Gibson, Bahamian immigration minister, resigned. The Tribune in Nassau had published Page One pictures of him in bed with Anna Nicole Smith. Could happen to anyone. Riding high in February, shot down in March. And, in fairness to the minister, both parties were fully clothed. Indeed, Anna Nicole was more fully clothed than she usually was out of bed.

My point here is that this is a classic scandal in the Westminster parliamentary tradition: On Monday, you're blandly denying vague rumors; on Tuesday, they're all over the front page; on Wednesday, you're photographed alongside your long-suffering wife vowing to fight this outrageous slur; on Thursday, you're resigning to spend more time with your family and the prime minister issues a statement that the nation will always be grateful to you for your long years of public service culminating in the passage of the Municipal Airports (Parking Lot Signage) Bill; and on Friday your successor is seated behind your desk already working on his own career-detonating scandal.

Washington doesn't seem to do things that way. In a Beltway political scandal, you appoint a special prosecutor who investigates it for years and the scandal metastasizes and morphs in bizarre fantastic ways.

I'm not being especially partisan here. I thought Bill Clinton should have resigned when the blue dress showed up. But the months pass and instead he's testifying to the grand jury about his definition of nonsexual relations -- if the party of the first part is apart from the parts of the party of the second part while the party of the second part is partaking of the parts of the party of the first part, etc. Once you argue on that basis, the very process is a mockery.

What just happened to Scooter Libby is, I think, worse. In his closing remarks, Patrick Fitzgerald invited the jury to view a narrow perjury case as something epic: "What is this case about?" the special counsel mused. "Is it about something bigger?" Fortunately, he was musing rhetorically, and he had the answer on hand: "There is a cloud over the vice president. ... There is a cloud over the White House."

Indeed. And what exactly is the cloud? Is it that the name of a covert agent was intentionally leaked in breach of the relevant law on nondisclosure?

No. On the alleged violation of Valerie Plame's identity, Mr. Fitzgerald was unable to produce not only a perpetrator but any crime.

Is the cloud then a more general murk? A politically motivated attempt to damage the white knight Joe Wilson as he sallied forth against the Bush dragon?

No. The man who leaked Valerie Plame's name was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department and a man who dislikes Mr. Rove, Mr. Cheney and all their neocon warmongering works. The journalist he leaked it to -- Bob Novak -- also opposed the Iraq war. Neither Mr. Armitage nor Mr. Novak had any animus against Joe Wilson. On the contrary, they broadly shared Mr. Wilson's skepticism on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. There was no conspiracy, just Mr. Armitage gossiping like the gravelly-voiced schoolgirl he has been for years.

When a prosecutor speaks about "a cloud over the vice president's office" and "a cloud over the White House," he is speaking politically. There is no law about the amount of cumulus permitted over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The prosecutor is speculating on political capital -- reputation, credibility, the currency of politics. Once damaged, they're hard to recover.