How would you characterize someone who steps over the line of fairness, of decency and perhaps of the law, all for the sake of political revenge?
What do you say of a powerful individual whose actions result in the waste of large sums of public money and oblige other persons and organizations to engage teams of lawyers to defend themselves, when that individual could have ended the matter with a few honest words?
What term would you choose to describe a man who would stand silent, letting others be put through an inquisition or even be sent to jail as a result of his own vindictive misbehavior?
This is the question I have been asking myself since Karl Rove’s lawyer confirmed that he did spoke to reporters about Valerie Plame. The deliberate unmasking of a covert agent can be a felony. Allegedly, however, Rove managed to identify the operative to Cooper and perhaps Novak, Miller and others without speaking either her maiden or her married name.
A tricky bit of footwork there, huh.
So far, the pain of the process Rove is alleged to have set in motion has fallen entirely on others. So how might one describe him?
I have tried without success to find a term in the criminal lexicon for one who stands silently by while another bears the consequences of one’s own actions... Excuse me I am just a techie. Legal minds fill in the void.
With skillful lawyering and his exalted political connections at the very top, it’s unlikely he’ll wind up being called a felon.
The word I would favor is coward.