Victor Davis Hanson On The Libby Lessons

When I look at politics and government one of the things I try to do is have an accurate understanding of how these things work. With this in mind, I recommend Victor Davis Hanson's take on the lessons to learn from the Libby affair:

1. We now have a new branch of government—a symbiosis between a special prosecutor and the Washington DC judiciary. Given the available jury pool and justices in DC, together with the high-stakes, high-publicity of a special prosecutorship, any prominent conservative is fair game. An innocent or hung verdict spells financial ruin, a guilty one the destruction of a career.

All this is much like the ancient Athenian notion of ostracism, in which the prominent could be exiled and ruined simply by a populist vote on their high-profile stature that was felt to be a danger to an egalitarian Athenian ethos.

2. The Washington DC press corps and high-ranking officials talk, spin, and network 24/7. Trying to sort out anything among any of them is impossible. These are the grunt soldiers with no rules of engagement in a vast ideological battle between the mainststeam media and conservative administrations.

3. There is no sense of proportion or morality involved. One example: Richard Armitage comes off quite negatively. He knew he was the most culpable given the initial directive of the Special Prosecutor, and yet stayed quiet while the searchlight went on to others. This was especially reprehensible given his prior carefully crafted voice of conscious as a luke-warm supporter of the war.

4. We will never know all the power-plays, ego-trips, and vested reputations in all this. But apparently Fitzgerald had a lot on the line by going after Libby, and was willing to apply to him a standard not applied to others in or out of government. This does not mean necessarily that Libby’s testimony was not inconsistent, only that a degree of scrutiny was applied to it in a manner not done elsewhere.

5. All this reminds me again of wisdom from my late mother, a California superior and appellate court justice. She used to remind me that the most powerful people in government are not judges, not juries, not even legislators or executives—but state and federal attorneys, who act as judge and jury of sorts in selecting whom to prosecute. I say that because in the modern age, an indictment ipso facto can spell financial ruin and irrevocable loss of reputation. Our prosecutors must be above any hint of partisanship or grudge-holding, and must not see their offices as platforms for wide-ranging, Les Miserables obsessions.

Hanson also offers a summary of the details of note in the case. It does seem to me that this case is an illustration (and unfortunately it seems there have been others before and will probably be others to follow) where politics became part of our system of criminal justice. It is quite difficult for me to understand that in all of this there was an alleged crime, which upon further review seems never to have been a crime, and there was another person who should have been identified as the person who committed the crime (had there been one), and this person was neither arrested nor tried nor convicted, nor was this person even publicly criticized. Yet, another man who now is known not to have committed the crime (had there been one) that began all of this is convicted and waiting to be sentenced. This doesn't seem to me to be what our system of government is supposed to be about. But it does seem to be one aspect of how our system of government works.