In December 2000, when the Bush team was preparing to move into the White House, Newsweek ran the following about incoming White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card:

            “And he can be as hard as Texas dirt.  As a close friend tells it, Card was managing a McDonald’s during his college years at the University of South Carolina when he realized someone was stealing money.  None of his employees would admit to the crime.  He fired them all.”  (December 11, 2000)

Card is not from Texas; he is from Massachusetts, where he facilitated the 1988 “Willie Horton” campaign against Dukakis.

What is most striking about this little historical reflection, of course, is the demonstrated indifference to unkindness and unfairness.

But anyone who has been following the CIA leak matter and the current perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, has to be struck by the difference between then (McDonald’s) and now (White House, OVP).

The contrast between Card’s treatment of underpaid McDonalds’ employees and the deferential handling Bush-Cheney VIPs received throughout months of lying to and stonewalling the public could not be more stark. Their cosseting continued while several administration personnel shared an undercover CIA analyst’s identity with several media figures – all planted with an unconvincing item that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger was arranged by his wife. This plant began at the highest media levels, with the item given – BEFORE Wilson’s column came out – to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and Judith Miller of the New York Times.

Now back to that earlier Card episode. Admittedly, Card’s management style penalizes the innocent far more than the guilty.

But if the CIA leak had concerned White House officials as much as they profess, it goes without saying that the joint and several punishment dished out by Card at McDonald’s would be far more fitting now than it was then.

We still don’t know who the leaker-in-chief was, though obviously Cheney was a major part of the picture. But it was incontestably the White House that had the motive, the means, and the opportunity to punish someone who displeased Bush.

In closing, a quotation for the day:        

"I am embarrassed by our state government," said state Rep. Andrew H. Card Jr. of Holbrook. "Government must be open and its officials must be, above all else, must be honest." – campaign in Massachusetts, 1982.