Once Caught, Don't Dig Deeper

In politics and public relations, often it is not about the crime, but the cover-up. Call it the Watergate Syndrome, but individuals who are reflexively unable to accept blame or admit guilt believe that if they can simply lean in to a story, steer into the skid, they can escape. They do so in part due to an escalating series of successes with this strategy in their past; often is will be the reason why they have risen to the place or maintained their position.

The current edition of the Watergate Syndrome is Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Please, this isn't political, this is public relations tactical. The Speaker's strategy vis-a-vis CIA briefings is starting to unravel under the continued pressure of questioning. (If you must, substitute the name George Bush and the topic Weapons of Mass Destruction if that helps you to continue reading).

Yesterday's press events are bringing this WS to its end game. The purpotrator is cornered, and faces that classic decision: mea culpa or evasive action. What is often forgotten was the original issue -- in this case, waterboarding as interogation techinique -- and what becomes the issue is the veracity of the target.

To put it in the classic words of the late Tennessee Senator Howard Baker: What did the [Speaker] know and when did [she] know it? To me, that quotation did more to bring Richard Nixon's presidency to a close than anything else. It spoke to the heart of the cover-up; the deception.

Americans love the tragic hero, love to forgive, love a comeback story -- but only to the extent they believe they have not been played. Nixon's cardinal sin was not admitting to the events of Watergate early on when it could have been more effectively poo-poo'ed away. By the second term of his Presidency, he had forgotten that he himself had escaped a controversy over campaign contributions as Dwight Eisenhower's vice presidential candidate. He laid himself before the American people with the Checkers Speech, and his wife Pat not receiving fur coats from fat cats but owning simply a "good Republican coat."

Who plays the role of Baker today? Leon Panetta's defense of the CIA is getting close. Why Panetta? Isn't it his job to back his people as an adminstrator? Certainly, but this overlooks the real value of Baker.

Who remembers what Baker's party was? That's right, he was the Republican senator from Tennessee, replaced by a young man named Al Gore when he later became Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. And the legend has it the person that came up the question was a young staffer, future Tennessee senator himself, Fred Thompson.

Those who play the Watergate Syndrome are rarely undone by their opponents; their failure most often comes at the hands of their own. So will the former California house member Panetta be Pelosi's Baker?