The Washington Post has an article called “White House Ethics, Honesty Questioned,” written yesterday by Richard Morin and Claudia Deane. The opening paragraph:

A majority of Americans say the indictment of senior White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby signals broader ethical problems in the Bush administration, and nearly half say the overall level of honesty and ethics in the federal government has fallen since President Bush took office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey.

Broader ethical problems? In the Bush administration? No way! I think that having aides diseminate secrets is certainly a problem, but why are Americans losing faith in the federal government? And, why do a large percentage of Americans think President Bush was directly involved? By all accounts it wasn’t the government leaking per se, but a top aide.

55 percent of the public believes the Libby case indicates wider problems “with ethical wrongdoing” in the White House. So over half of all Americans think that the entire White House is colluding in something, despite the fact that only Libby and Rove had been implicated and only Libby has been indicted (so far!).

But it should be noted, as Don Surber points out, that the American public does not think President Bush has done anything wrong. I feel the same way. I doubt President Bush had his hand in this because, to be frank, I think he actually does hold secrecy and public servants in some regard. Blogger Jose Sierra points this out, that the media is making more out of this than is necessarily there.

The Washington Post’s poll indicates that 55% of Americans think that Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s charges were based on the facts, while an amazing 30% think they were motivated by partisan politics. I think that’s a shame really, perhaps the result of biased media, or just the diehard Republicans, but leaking an agent’s name to the press is a crime and should be pursued as such. What if Valerie Plame were serving in say, China, or N. Korea, as a literal undercover agent, her life and the lives of her contacts could have been in imminent danger!

So President Bush, elected on a platform of bringing back integrity and honor to the , has yet another scandal to deal with. The Iraq War hasn’t gone as well as he might have imagined, the Niger-uranium scandal (which is the basis for Plame being “outed”) seems to be as vaporous as Saddam’s nuclear program, and the government’s lacklustre response to Hurricane Katrina; all of these just give Fitzgerald’s investigation and Libby’s indictment the air of icing on the cake.

I for one am not surprised President Bush now has thoroughly grey hair. I think I’d have torn mine all out by now…