It is not yet meltdown, but the mood inside the White House is dreadful. Bush is tetchy, and the swear words are flying. His own approval ratings have stabilised at around 43 per cent, but the Republican ascendancy is toppling all around him. The indictment of his fellow Texan and main enforcer in congress, House leader Tom DeLay, is a serious blow that has driven furious Republican congressmen to sign large cheques returning funds from DeLay's now toxic political action committee. The SEC investigation of Senate leader Bill Frist for possible insider trading is another setback. Republican pollster Frank Luntz warns that the party could lose both the House and Senate in next year's elections.
White House staff have also been rocked by the arrest of one of their own, David Safavian, who oversaw contracts for the White House office of management and budget, on corruption and perjury charges. This stems from his dealings with the prominent conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is now under indictment for bank fraud, and maybe worse (see below). Meanwhile, the praetorian guard in Dick Cheney's office is distracted by the prospect of a conspiracy charge over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, now that New York Times reporter Judith Miller is out of jail and testifying to the special prosecutor. And the neocons are in a dither because former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin has reached a plea bargain with the FBI after being charged with five counts of passing classified information to the American-Israel public affairs committee (Aipac). This means a very large hole has appeared in the defence case for two senior Aipac men, lobbyist Steve Rosen, and foreign policy analyst Keith Weissman. Both are spending a great deal of time with their lawyers.
Bush driven to boozing?
What annoys Bush most is that the tales of White House disarray are spreading out beyond the beltway into the tabloids, which have largely ignored politics since the halcyon days of Bill and Monica. The National Enquirer recently told the nation that Katrina had driven the famously teetotal president back to drink: "The president was caught by first lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster. His worried wife yelled at him: 'Stop, George'." The even more salacious Weekly World News had Bush sneaking tokes on a joint, and the Globe ran the headline "Bush Marriage Crisis." No doubt Elvis will come down in his UFO to persuade them to kiss and make up.
How sound is Miers?
Talking of divine intervention, word from the White House morning prayer meetings is that there is now a daily call on the Almighty to bestow the spirit of "devout resolution." When word spread that one of the group's regular attendees, Bush's personal legal adviser Harriet Miers, had been nominated for the supreme court, the prayers became particularly heartfelt. But not everyone was happy. Within minutes, fellow Texans on the staff were pounding on the door of chief of staff Andy Card to ask if he knew that when Miers ran for Dallas city council in 1989, she backed Aids education programmes and courted the lesbian-gay lobby. Oh yes, and she donated $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential campaign. Still, she is sound on abortion. Texas supreme court justice Nathan Hecht, her on-off boyfriend and the chap who converted her to be washed in the blood of Jesus at Dallas's Valley View Christian church, says that she told him that "life begins at conception," and the two of them went to several anti-abortion fundraisers.
Abramoff, the mafia and Thatcher
The fuss about Miers may fade into insignificance as the Abramoff scandal starts to spread into mafia territory. The fraud charges against Abramoff relate to the purchase of the SunCruz casino cruise line in Florida, owned by Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was gunned down in his car in February 2001 after claiming that Abramoff and his partners had stiffed him on the money. Abramoff is already charged with faking a $23m wire transfer for the down-payment. Last month, three men were charged with the Boulis murder, among them one Tony Moscatiello, to whom the FBI has traced SunCruz payments. Abramoff sought Tom DeLay's help in rounding up finance for this deal, and brought investors to meet DeLay in Abramoff's private box to watch the Washington Redskins play the Dallas Cowboys.
There is even a British angle to the story. Federal investigators have discreetly asked Margaret Thatcher to confirm whether she met DeLay in London in 2000, as DeLay claims in his account of "a business trip." The Feds think it was really a Scottish golfing holiday paid for by Abramoff. The meeting apparently did take place, but Thatcher remembers it as only a courtesy call.
The plot thickens. The conglomerate Tyco hired Abramoff to help it to relocate to the Caribbean, neatly avoiding US taxes. Tyco general counsel Tim Flanigan has told the Senate judiciary committee that Abramoff claimed he could relieve Tyco of any threat of a special liability tax because he had "good relationships with members of congress," including DeLay and the White House's top political aide, Karl Rove. Rove says he cannot recall discussing Tyco with Abramoff. Doubtless he checked with his personal aide Susan Ralston, who used to be Abramoff's secretary.
