Will Bush Pardon Libby?

As Frank Rich said this morning in his New York Times column ("Why Libby’s Pardon Is a Slam Dunk"), “Even by Washington’s standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.” And why is it a slam dunk? Again, to quote Rich: “The pardon is a must for Mr. Bush. He needs Mr. Libby to keep his mouth shut.” The Scooter, if you remember, founded the White House Iraq Group along with a few other select Republicans (Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley). The purpose of WHIG was to manufacture lies and fictions to justify the war in Iraq. If Bush doesn’t pardon Libby, it’s only a matter of time until Libby would publish a redhot expose. And what a tell-all that book would be! But one of the things I always think about when reflecting on murderers and serial killers (I include WHIG members in that group) is: What will the real effect be on the killers’ kids? Mary Matalin and James Carville have two daughters. The oldest will be thirteen this summer. At some point, one or both of these girls will start to do research on what their high-profile mommy did during the war. It’s one thing to believe in an ideology. It is quite another to lie and make up false data in order to support that ideology and in so doing kill thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent people. When young Matalin “Matty” Carville and young Emerson “Emmy” Carville start reading about their Mom, what will they be able to make of the truth they will inevitably find out? The books that the Carville girls may write would be at least as interesting as any book I. Lewis Libby might be threatening to write.