Just Plain Afraid
To quote Gephardt, "miserable failure" is the fear that is driving the White House's tentative approach to the commission. The President doesn't want to meet them, so he agreed to closed-door session with the commission heads only. And he wants to be able to stall them, so he will only give an hour to them. Now, in a shift accompanying the decision to throw "principle" out the window and let Condi testify in public, the President has agreed to meet the whole commission, BUT, as Josh Marshall found in the White House counsel's letter....Bush gets a chaperone. The Vice-President wants to be there too...you know, just in case.

This really should be embarassing. There's no real threat that the commission is going to come down hard on the President. They all sound eager to reach bi-partisan (read, toothless) conclusions and by all accounts they are not going to say the attack could have been stopped. No new smoking guns will come out demonstrating the contrary. This hesitancy on the part of the White House can only be about being scared that the President will say something stupid, or make clear his low level of engagement in policy and decision-making.

And frankly, they've got a better chance of diversion with the whole commission anyway, where a questioner's thread can only be followed for a few minutes before it's someone else's turn, than with only 2, who could dig far enough in follow-ups, even in an hour, to make him uncomfortable. So now he will get relief from a questioner every 5 minutes (and they always spend at least 3 minutes making a speech anyway), PLUS he Cheney will be there to step in if it gets tough.

Thanks for helping us get to the truth, Mr. President.