Finger Wagging, Then And Now

In Wednesday's Daily News, Thomas DeFrank reported the following:

An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Now as Josh Marshall notes in this post, "two years ago"---particularly in this case---leaves a lot to fuzziness. On October 7, 2003, Bush made the following comments about the investigation:

I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth. That's why I've instructed this staff of mine to cooperate fully with the investigators -- full disclosure, everything we know the investigators will find out. I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers. But we'll find out.

If we give Bush the benefit of the doubt on the timing and assume (via DeFrank's piece) that he learned of Rove's involvement sometime after he made the above comments, what did the president say from that point on? We do know that---actively and passively---he continued to deny knowing the identity of the leaker for many months. From a press conference on June 10, 2004:

Q Given -- given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name?

THE PRESIDENT: That's up to --

Q And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.

Of course, we know that subsequently the president moved the goalposts, saying he would fire anyone who "committed a crime." And that stance then morphed into the current total clam-up. But if readers have other examples of Bush professing ignorance of the leaker's name during 2004 or 2005, please post them in the comments section.

To me, Bush's public statements on this are paramount. Yes, what he said to the prosecutors is legally crucial---and as reported in this piece by Murray Waas, Bush stated to prosecutors in June 2004 that Rove had assured him he was not involved with the Plame leak. If both DeFrank's and Waas' reports are true, this president could be in extremely serious trouble. But here's what I really want to know: did this president stare into a camera and lie about this to the American public? My definitive, lasting memory of Bill Clinton is the finger-wagging "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." After the past few years, how insignificant and silly that all seems now, eh? But I still consider that to be outrageous conduct by Clinton and---legalities aside---it was the main reason I favored his impeachment at the time. In each of the articles of impeachment, the following supporting paragraph appeared:

William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

To me, looking into the camera, wagging a finger and lying to the American people embodied the spirit of impeachment as expressed in the above paragraph. If we learn that President Bush's version of the finger wag has been just as deceitful, the relative seriousness of the underlying issues may make the I-word far more of an imperative this time around.