Chicago Tribune - Bush's People Insist that Everything is Just Fine, in Part Thanks to Alito

WASHINGTON -- In the war room where they work to steer the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito for a seat on the Supreme Court, the president's lieutenants see the early days of the war as going their way.

And, in a White House bracing for what will become of the remaining work of a special counsel's investigation of an embarrassing leak of a CIA operative's identity, the same lieutenants are rallying around the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, whose legal liability in the inquiry remains uncertain.

While all this may make for an inauspicious time for President Bush to leave, aides say Bush has departed for a five-day tour of South America confident of winning at least one battle back home. The launch of Alito's nomination has started on a trajectory far closer to the path that Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. followed than the crash of Bush's withdrawn nominee, Harriet Miers.

"He's given momentum to an important part of the president's agenda," presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said Thursday of Alito's first laps around the Senate this week. "We see steady momentum building in his favor."

Indeed, reaction from members of the Senate's Gang of 14, the coalition of seven Republicans and seven Democrats who steered the Senate around a showdown over Bush's lower-court appointees this year, is good news for the White House. Alito's judicial philosophy alone, they say, does not present sufficient cause for a filibuster to block his confirmation.

This is a White House sorely in need of good news. The president's popularity hit a new low this week in the latest CBS News opinion poll. Just 35 percent of those surveyed approved of Bush's job performance.

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago-based U.S. attorney, still is at work on his probe of who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003. One of the vice president's former top assistants, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, proclaimed his innocence in federal court Thursday. Rove expects word of his fate from Fitzgerald within weeks.

Friends of Rove and the White House, too, are busy squelching rumors that the administration is debating internally whether Rove can remain effective regardless of what comes of the inquiry.

"This is palace intrigue," said one senior Republican official.

"There are always people in the palace who think it's in their self-interest to damage the king's closest adviser," he said. "There are people in the White House who think they'd be better off without Karl, but these are people who don't have the talent and ability to do the job."

The notion of a debate inside the White House suggests at least two people are talking about Rove's future, Bartlett added, "and that is not happening. . . . There is an investigation, and it wouldn't be fair to Karl or anyone else in the White House for there to be strategizing or meetings about someone's fate while that is going on."

Rove remains among the strategists helping Bush sell his nominee for the high court. That strategy is steered from a suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, an ornate behemoth that once housed the old War Department, beside the White House.

The war room is run by Steve Schmidt, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. The "sherpas," in White House parlance, escorting Alito through the Senate are former Sen. Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, and Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Committee chairman.

With twice-daily conference calls involving a dozen people inside the administration, the team coordinates Alito's courtesy calls on senators while lawyers at the Justice Department provide running analysis of his many appellate court opinions that could come into question.

Each morning the team coordinates its work with outside groups pressing for Alito's confirmation, such as Progress for America, which has pumped more than $400,000 into a cable TV ad campaign for Alito this week and $50,000 for Web site banner ads. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, serves as outside point man.

As for Bush, he has headed off on a five-day trip. With his court nomination relaunched, Bush at least can revel in his distance from Washington for a few days.

"We've had a good week," said Bartlett, left behind with Rove to juggle live grenades. "We feel like the president heads out of the country on a strong note."