The Village Warning Bells Are Ringing

Expanding on my posts this week that the Village is warning that the price of Eric Holder's investigations into unfinished Bush business will be the death of Obamacare, the Double G looks at a conversation on yesterday's Morning Joe with NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd about Holder's possible investigation. Todd's responses are very, very telling as to how the Village mindset works:

Todd: Look, let's take all of these stories in one big thing: really, the only important thing -- the most important thing -- the President has to focus on is getting the public's trust on the economy, and pushing health care. Cheney, the CIA, and in some respects Sotomayor are cable catnip --

Brzezinski: Yep.

Todd: It's news catnip - but they're sort of clouding the two most important issues the President's got to get his arms around this week: winning back trust of the middle on the economy and pushing health care through.

And of course it would be a darn shame if anything "clouded" the "middle's" opinion of the President on the economy and Obamacare. That, in Chuck Todd's opinion, would be a grave mistake. What centrists think about Obama on the economy and his health care plan are the things Obama should be worrying about...not this silly investigation. After all, Centrists run Chuck Todd's world.

Todd: And I think that's why, in the President's gut, he doesn't want to do this. They've made that clear they don't want to do this. I think that's what you see a lot of the West Wing -- they don't want to get into this because of what you're saying.

Ultimately, a lawyer gets paid to not tell you what the law is -- but to interpret the law, to tell you how far you can push things until you cross a line that a judge will say is illegal. That's what lawyers get paid to do: they get paid to interpret the law, and interpret the law in a way that allows you to stretch things.

You are on a slippery slope - this is a very dangerous aspect to go after, because these CIA guys will say, as you said Pat, we got the letter from these lawyers in the Bush Justice Department that said we can do this. You can't suddenly change the law retroactively because there's another interpretation of this. I'm sure there are a legal minds that will fight and say I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems to me that's a legal and a political slippery slope.

I've made my "Obama as Dubya" comparison on a number of occasions, but not when Obama is actually trying to address civil liberties issues. But Chuck Todd is assuming the Obama White House works exactly like the Bush one did, and isn't even bothering to pretend otherwise. Look at the warnings he is delivering here:

• Satisfying the centrists is the most important thing.
• Obama is risking health care otherwise.
  
• Going after the CIA is dangerous.
• Obama is on a slippery legal slope.

I had no idea Chuck Todd was working for Karl Rove, but there you go. The guy is spouting the GOP talking points from April on this issue. Double G concludes:

That's now completely reversed. It's the establishment press that stands most stalwart against investigations. They believe, as Richard Cohen so memorably put it when railing against the Lewis Libby conviction, that "it is often best to keep the lights off." Few things explain better what has happened to our political class than the fact that (with some important exceptions) it is establishment journalists who are the most aggressive opponents of investigations of high-level government lawbreaking. Trying to prevent investigations of their friends, colleagues and bosses in political power is one of the few times they're willing so explicitly to turn themselves into advocates, as Chuck Todd did here.

Indeed.

[UPDATE 1:06 PM] Chuck Todd apparently reads Double G and realized he's been called out. He'll be doing a podcast with Glenn Greenwald later today.