The Republican Hatchet Machine Kicks into Gear

David Brooks starts the day with derisize mocking of Clarke's opinions. It's a typical Brooks Apologist Screed, complete with his famous "actually, we're all to blame for this" and mixture of historical and pop cultural references.

Bill Frist chops him up cold, in an exceedingly effective counterattack. First, Frist accuses Clarke of lying before Congress, by portraying the administration previously of acting vigorously before 9/11 to oppose Al Qaeda, only to say now the opposite. "Loyalty to any Administration will be no defense if it is found that he has lied before Congress."

Frist's main critique: if everything Clarke is saying is true, then he has long "known better" than the administration, and why didn't he threaten to resign or raise the public alarm about Al-Qaeda? Frist says if Clarke kept quiet within the Bush administration just to keep his job, then "shame on him for putting partisanship above principle".

It's a disgengenuous argument, because a Presidential advisor first gives the President their best advice, and then when the president has made his decision, backs the President's policy, regardless of what they might personally feel. For example, it's common knowledge that Colin Powell was giving Bush different advice about what to do than Bush eventually did, and then comes to Congress and elsewhere do defend that decision. No one argues that's a bad order of things: it's your responsibility to answer to the President with advice, but present and defend the president's policies to the public.

Otherwise, we'd have people who weren't the President making policy. But while this is true enough, the argument could stick with Joe Blow: "Why didn't he protest if he was so against the Administration's policies?" Example quote :

I myself have fortunately not had the opportunity to work with such an individual who could write solicitous and self-defending emails to his supervisor, the National Security Advisor, and then by his own admission lie to the press out of a self conceived notion of loyalty only to reverse himself on all accounts for the sale of a book.

There are a couple of ways Clarke can overcome this attack. First, if called before Congress to account for "lies" of believing one thing, and presenting another, then he can come out with the above: "As a member of the administration, I owe advice to the President and represent the President's policies to everyone else." Frist will attack this as "lies, saying one thing then and another thing now, and partisanship above principle".

But, most importantly, what Frist is doing is changing the conversation to "Did Clarke lie to congress?" and that's a potentially successful strategy.