The New Eichmann

Godwin's Law notwithstanding, Karl Rove invoked the old Nazi defense yesterday while making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows: "I was just following orders, and nothing bad that happened was my fault."

Mr. Rove, who is leaving the White House at the end of the month, didn’t cut an especially heroic or villainous figure. The strategist who looms in the public imagination as a political mastermind and West Wing Svengali used a rare appearance on camera to deliver an exiting White House aide’s most time-honored Washington message: mistakes were not made, and it’s not my fault.

He even denied responsibility for his hip-hop performance as a rapping “M.C. Rove” at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in March.

“They dragged me up there,” he told Mr. Wallace. “I was uncomfortable, and I said, ‘I’ve got a choice. I can be irritated and everybody will see it, or I can play along and try and show them I’m a good sport.’ ” He noted that his black-tie rap routine, shown over and over on television and the Internet, was his “most humiliating moment in Washington, bar none.”

The incident, and a video clip of it, didn’t come up during Mr. Rove’s appearance on “Meet the Press,” perhaps because David Gregory, the NBC White House correspondent who filled in on Sunday for Tim Russert, had also been dancing on stage that night.

Mr. Rove said he was blameless as well for his role in the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. White House officials were accused of seeking to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times in 2003 questioning the administration’s case for war in Iraq.

Asked by Mr. Gregory if he owed Ms. Wilson an apology, Mr. Rove gave a one-word answer, “No.”

Mr. Gregory asked Mr. Rove if he felt responsible for the downward slide of the Republican Party. “Well, look, everyone who identifies with the Republican Party ought to, ought to, ought to feel some responsibility,” he replied.

The humility act only goes so far, and it usually works to your credit when you're being modest about your successes. However, when you're the president's deputy chief of staff and everybody inside the Beltway knows that you are in charge of everything from where the RNC spends campaign money to how the Iraq war is conducted, it comes across as both craven and cowardly to say that you were just an innocent bystander when the shit hits the fan.

The implicit message is that if it's not Karl Rove's fault, then it has to lie elsewhere, and in his case the shit runs uphill, meaning that the person to blame is President Bush. That may easily be. George W. Bush is the one who hired Karl Rove, he's the one who gave him the job in White House, he's the one who didn't stop him from doing whatever it was that he now says he didn't do. But along the way, Karl Rove should have known that it is his job as a White House deputy to take the bullet for the president. He's the one who steps up when the going gets tough. He's the one, regardless of whether it's true or not, to take the fall when the wheels come off, and it's his job to protect the president at all costs. But here he goes, leaving the White House as if all of the problems are not his responsibility and without a word of regret or conciliation.

That's to be expected, though. If you look at Karl Rove's history of operations as a campaigner and as a White House operative, he makes very sure that he leaves no prints and is careful to have a ready excuse so that when he is finally brought to justice -- if that should ever happen -- he will be able to stand up and invoke the Eichmann defense: "I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from [George W. Bush] or any of my superiors."

And that goes for appearing on Sunday talk shows.

Bob Schieffer, who conducts interviews on “Face the Nation” on CBS as if they were chats over predinner drinks at the Metropolitan Club, asked Mr. Rove why he was subjecting himself to Sunday morning second-guessing.

“Somebody else made the decision for me,” he said. “I’m just doing what I was instructed to do.”

So, Karl, how's the weather in Buenos Aires this time of year?

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

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This is Melissa sneaking in here to post some video (care of Petulant) of the appearances to which MB refers:

Face the Nation



[Transcript here.]

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Fox News Sunday

Answering Chris Wallace's questions about subpoenas, executive privilege, and Valerie Plame:



"Nice try."—What an asshole.

[Transcript here.]