Richard Cohen's Insufferable Cluelessness

Can someone please explain to me why Richard Cohen continues to occupy such prime real estate in the world of political punditry? His column today is terrible even by his standards. He writes:

Monica Goodling is not my kind of gal. A graduate of two schools not known for partying (Messiah College and Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School), she would not be my ideal seatmate on a long airplane flight. But for vowing to take the Fifth in the ongoing probe of why and how eight U.S. attorneys were fired, I offer her my hearty congratulations. She knows that in Washington, free speech can cost you a fortune in legal fees.

The standard question about Goodling is: What is she hiding? After all, until her resignation last week, Goodling was the senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his liaison to the White House. She was at the center of the White House's purge of non-party party people (a pseudo-Stalinist term coined for this occasion) and so she must be hiding something. Maybe.

More likely, Goodling's problem is probably not what she's done but what she might do. If she testifies before Congress, swears to tell the truth and all of that, she will produce a record -- a transcript -- that can be used against her. If a subsequent witness later on has a different memory of what transpired, then the bloodcurdling cry of "special prosecutor" will once again be heard in the land.

How totally absurd. Does Cohen realize that if we were to accept this as a valid reason for refusing to testify, our entire system of government would grind to a halt? Simply put, it is outrageous to congratulate someone for pleading the Fifth and thereby preventing Congress from conducting its oversight responsibilities.

Moreover, the notion that merely testifying to the best of your recollection exposes you to any real risk of being prosecuted for perjury is just ludicrous. People are rarely prosecuted for lying to Congress, even in blatant cases. Indeed, a number of Goodling's superiors have already lied to Congress in connection with this very matter, and as of today, all of them are still working at the DOJ. I guarantee you they will never be prosecuted.

The precedent that supposedly validates Goodling's fear is, of course, the case of Scooter Libby. As Cohen explains:

No lawyer is going to be thrilled about letting a client testify in today's political environment. Remember, please, that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was not convicted of the crime that the special prosecutor was appointed to find -- who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame -- but of lying to a grand jury. In fact, the compulsively compulsive Patrick Fitzgerald not only knew early on who the leaker was but also that no law had been violated.

As an initial matter, Cohen is just making up the facts here. By the time Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed, Libby had already lied extensively to FBI investigators. In fact, the reason a special prosecutor was deemed necessarily was because evidence suggested that high-ranking White House officials had lied to investigators. So, from the beginning, Fitzgerald's investigation focused on why officials were lying; that was integral to his mission. And the claim that Fitzgerald "knew early on" that "no law had been violated" is just not true.

More importantly, though--and this is something that people like Cohen just can't seem to get their heads around--Libby was not felled by his poor memory. He made up a series of elaborate lies about matters material to a criminal investigation. This was proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court. Perjury prosecutions are exceedingly rare and are only pursued in the most egregious cases, cases where there is ample evidence that a person knowingly lied about matters material to a serious investigation.

Cohen bemoans that "ordinary politics--leaking, sniping, lying, cheating, exaggerating and other forms of PG entertainment--have been so thoroughly criminalized that only a fool would appear before Congress without attempting to bargain for immunity by first invoking the Fifth Amendment." What utter rubbish. Virtually every member of the Clinton administration was hauled before Congress multiple times, almost always for the most trivial of matters. But now that Congress wishes to ask questions of DOJ officials in connection with what Cohen admits is an important matter, he writes columns encouraging officials to take the Fifth and whining about the "criminalization" of politics. The criminalization of politics? Shouldn't we be more concerned with the politicization of crime, which is what this scandal is all about? I mean, is it even possible to be have your priorities any more out of whack? And since when are "lying" and "cheating" considered "ordinary politics"?

Cohen ends his epically bad column with this:

In the end, though, some thought has to be given to why Monica Goodling feels obligated to take the Fifth rather than merely telling Congress what happened in the AG's office. She's no criminal -- but what could happen to her surely is.

First of all, Cohen has absolutely no clue whether or not Goodling is a criminal. Odds are that she would not have invoked the Fifth and resigned had she not been worried about some sort of criminal exposure. Second, and more importantly, she would have nothing to fear--at least perjury-wise--if she simply testified candidly before Congress. It might not be a pleasant experience, but it's part of the job description. Executive branch officials have an obligation to answer questions posed by Congress in the exercise of its oversight responsibilities. That's the only way our system of government can work. That Cohen cannot see this is a testament to his insufferable cluelessness.