A Simple Question

After watching excerpts from C. Kyle Sampson's serpentine testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and listening to the endless chatter from the pundits, I'm left with a question.

We know all too well that the Bush administration's goal was to remake the government in their image; loyal Bushies who spoke with one voice and who had specific ideas and objectives about how to achieve them. Karl Rove has made no secret of seeking a permanent Republican majority. Now it comes out that the same thing was happening by proxy throughout the federal government. He's recruited people to run for office who follow the Bush agenda, he's got the Office of Political Affairs in the White House doing Power Point presentations to the GSA to get them to promote their candidates, he's putting his loyal minions in as prosecutors around the country, and he's spent most of the last eight years doing whatever it takes to accomplish this goal. Even after the Democrats took over the House and Senate last November, he and his people were still conducting meetings aimed at removing specific people and replacing them with their own.

So my question is this: Why are they acting like an eight-year-old busted for boosting the cookie jar?

Mom: Did you take a cookie?

Child (spewing crumbs): Uh...no....

Why are they risking legal jeopardy by lying about it and doing the one thing that history has taught them time and again does not work: covering it up?

You would think that Karl Rove and the Republicans would be bragging about this, rubbing it in the nose of the Democrats: "HA! You may have won the election, but we still have the power!" After all, this is the way they operated when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were strutting around, puffed up like pouter pigeons, so proud that they have vanquished the foe. Now, caught in the act of doing exactly what they said they would do, it's like it never happened. Who, me?

Could it be that some of the people involved here knew instinctively that what they were doing was so over-the-top that they were ashamed of it to the point that under oath they're stricken with amnesia? And could it be that the White House is refusing to let Mr. Rove testify under oath and in public because they know that he will come across like pudgy version of Oliver North and John Ehrlichman who bragged to Congress that yes, they did all these deeds and were proud of it? And why not? If this is what he believes is his duty and destiny, why should he hide it and let other people, like Scooter Libby, take the rap for him? This is his crowning achievement. It seems awfully odd that he would try to hide from it.