Time no friend of Bush

Scandal and corruption follows total legislative control as night follows day. Without effective brakes on their administrations an ‘anything goes’ because ‘we are not answerable’ mindset is all too common.
The governments of the ‘anti-terror’ coalition all have (had) one thing in common; they had the numbers to totally control their respective political environments.
The ‘had’, in parenthesis, signifies the first partner to fall, Italy’s Belusconi.
Facing down the inevitable scandals of their administrations has meant developing a set of effective strategies. In the main, given the overall bulldozer tactics, time has been a convenient cure for even the worst excess.
Stall, deny, obfuscate and wait for another diversion to sweep it from the public eye and mind.
The Bush administration obviously had this ‘crisis management’ technique in mind, explain nothing, just do it and let time heal the wounds; when confronted with the Goss issue.
But like Belusconi, like Britain’s Blair and Australia’s Howard, time has allowed too many unresolved issues build and intertwine, the tactic is now falling apart.
Whatever happened behind closed doors, whatever the arrangements and accommodations, when Goss emerged to verbally reinforce the ‘mystery’ of his departure there were simply too many potential scenarios to allow the matter to pass quietly.
The Bush regime is now trapped in a mess of scandals from which time no longer offers escape. The next diversion will be, more than likely, another running story line from the great White House soap opera.
The best clue is the story in Capitol Hill Blue: "The lawyer for former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby said on Friday he would argue that his client revealed intelligence on Iraq after Vice President Dick Cheney authorized it and President George W. Bush declassified the information."
But if not the Plame affair there is still a wealth of other candidates to keep the Bush show in the limelight.
Bush’s partners, all apparently reading from the same script, are finding they are in the same predicament. By not addressing various ethical failures as they arise, by letting time deal with them, they have allowed a mass of unresolved issues to slowly swamp them.
Even worse, for them, almost any questionable issue now takes on a major importance. These governments have been living in a fools paradise and as we say in Australia, ‘the chooks (chickens) are now coming home to roost.’