What Was Dahlia Smoking?

I’ve always been a big Dahlia Lithwick fan—still am, actually—but dear God, what was this woman smoking yesterday (link)?

[A]s it turns out, Goodling is nobody's parody. She is smart and assertive and articulate. And freakishly candid to boot. She comes across as nondefensive—or as nondefensive as anyone can be with a wall of scowling lawyers seated behind her and an array of voracious paparazzi in front of her. Goodling is Elle Woods without the puppy in drag.

Was she watching the same channel I was? No, guess not (link). In fairness, Dahlia regains her sanity quickly, making it clear that it’s not so much Monica II who won, but the committee Democrats who lost. There were, indeed, some good questions here and there. But Dahlia is quite right to wonder

why Democrats allow themselves to be rope-a-doped. They let Goodling give up all the good stuff in the first 30 minutes of her testimony and don't seem to notice or push her on it.

And she nails the core point:

[A]lmost nobody sees fit to ask follow-up questions about how the list was made, what criteria were used, and what exactly the White House did to play along. Nobody asks why she cried when she quit, what she made of those e-mails, or much of anything at all about Alberto Gonzales.

All fair comment; but Dahlia seems not to notice that nothing in this later presentation comes close to supporting that opener, which sounds like nothing so much as Ron Kessler gushing over Ann Romney (link). As the Commendatore says in Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, even a stupid general can win a battle if the enemy general is a little stupider.

My Next Nightmare

I guess the point that haunts me most about the Monica II testimony is the moment where someone (I am too indolent to go back and seek it out) asked her if she had any personnel experience before coming to the Justice Department. In answer, she recalled her work in student government.

Exactly. This kid has the makings of a nightmare boss. She’s a know-it-all and a motormouth with a mean streak (except when she goes on a 45-minute self-pity crying jag) who thinks that life is one long extension of the sorority house. I’m gonna have nightmares in which I am a clueless 26 again, with a wife and a couple of babies to support, and Monica II is the only thing that stands between me breadline. Unless I can cancel her out with something milder, like the thought of being tied with an anthill and covered with honey, or keelhauled by Captain Kidd.

[Tedious afterthought: one big difference is that a lot of her adversaries in this case are not clueless 26-year-olds but highly skilled professionals--and, for all their conservatism,. highly princpled. David Iglesias is obviously not the kind of chap you push around easily. Nor John McCay, nor even, it seems, John Comey.]

Everything about her so far tells me that she is Paula Abdul on American Idol (thanks, John)—cute and dumb, but with a sharp tongue, free in her judgments of other people's lives. Whether Monica II (or, come to that, Paula Abdul) comes out of this as a superstar or just another has-been is an open question, but in each case, I am tempted to remember the old line about how “she doesn’t seem to know what it is she is famous for.” All of which reminds me—on the whole, I still prefer Moncia I.

Update--Obermann Tracks Underbelly: I see that Obermann leads his Monica II coverage tonight with a soundbyte in which she claims as her qualification for the job of AG Hitperson her experience as "student body president."

Updqate: Just picked this up from the BBC; attributed to Catherine the Great: "I shall be a tyrant; that is my business. God will forgive me; that is his."

The New Oliver North?

Monica Goodling has pretty clearly nailed her place as this administration’s Monica (link), and there are a lot of folks (that would be me) who can’t wait to hear her testify (under immunity) before a Democratic-controlled committee on Capitol Hill.

Maybe. But be careful what you wish for. Remember Oliver North back in the Reagan years, slated to be the fall guy for Iran-Contra. He went before a Congressional committee investigating the debacle, and in terms of political theatre, pretty much ate their lunch. Feisty and confrontational, the hearings gave him a permanent place in the wingnut pantheon that he enjoys to this day. Granted he had to endure 16 felony indictments and three convictions but these were overturned and probably served only to enhance his lecture fee.

I’m not predicting this. Actually, I’m not even betting on it. From the sound of things, Monica is a sheltered infant punching way above her weight. But an outsider might have thought that of Ollie in 1986, also. Who can tell what is in store? Maybe a radio talk show, a couple of thriller novels, a Senate candidacy, a retrospective when somebody with a sense of history identifies the new/new Monica/Oliver 20 years from now…

Fn: One index of Ollie’s success is the way he lives in urban legend. There’s a story goin’ round that Ollie in his testimony identified—by name—Osama Bin Laden. It’s balderdash of course, but durable enough to achieve its place of honor at Snopes (link, cf. link)

Magna Carta, We Hardly Knew Ye...

Is it just me, or is anyone else frosted by Monica Gooding’s claim of her Fifth Amendment privilege—not that she claimed it, but the insolent, smarmy, in-your-face way that she claimed it? I quote from the letter sent to the committee by her counsel (posted in full here):

[T]he public record is clear that certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have already reached conclusions about the matter under investigstion and the veracity of testimony provided by the Department of Justice to date. … [T]he Committee’s Ranking Member, Senator Specter, has suggested that senator Schumer is using the hearings to promote his political party. … Senator Specter has publicly raised questions about the basic fairness of the Committee’s inquiry and lack of “objectivity.” … The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real.” … Where the Committee, its Chairman, and prominent members have already reached conclusions about the matter under investigation and the veracity of the Department’s testimony, and where the forum is politically charged and lacks fundamental fairness s questioned by the Ranking Member, and most importantly … we have advised Ms. Gooding (and she has decided) to invoke her Constitutional right not to answer any questions.”

Translated: our claim of the privilege is the sheerest fiction, a pure technicality without any basis in fact. But we won’t cooperate because we don’t like the court.

Well, of course not—who does? I must remember that the next time I get a traffic ticket: I don’t think I’m going to show up, because you might convict me.

I must say I think it is pretty rich for anyone in this lot to talk about “fairness” when they’ve spent the last six years trying to repeal Magna Carta. On the other hand, I suppose I should give her points for a kind of sincerity: if government is just an instrument of personal gain, why then it makes perfect sense to treat it with a kind of manipulative cynicism.

Fn.: I cheated. I edited some good stuff out of the quotes above. For example, the letter also said:

[I]t has come to our attention that a senior Department of Justice official has privately told Senator Schumer that he (the official) was not entirely candid in his report to the Committee, and that the official allegedly claimed that others, including our client, did not inform him of certain pertinent facts.

Translated: Oops. Maybe we have a good Fifth Amendment claim after all. Well, all right then.

Afterthought: Somehow, until just now I had overlooked this. Had I seen it before I drafted this note, I might have saved myself the bother. But my spleen does feel better.

Update: I'm watching Sen. Patrick Leahy with Tim Russert as he puts a somewhat different spin on this matter. He says he reads her as saying that she doesn't want to have to testify because "she might lie," i.e., in testimony in the future. Leahy, surely one of the most circumspect of Senators, rightly found this proposition absurd. FWIW, Sen. Orrin Hatch, in the same discussion, was as shrill and near to losing it as I've ever seen him.