Lockhart's Motives

If you Google "honest Joe/Joseph Lockhart," you get a big fat zero. Of course, that doesn't prove he's conniving, or that he has ulterior motives for acting as he does.

But as Rathergate goes into round three (discovery, denial, partial admission), one does have to ask: What motivated famed political operative and Clintonian spin doctor Joe Lockhart to voluntarily come clean with the goods, or at least some of them, regarding the now-public fact that he acted in cahoots with CBS producer Mary Mapes? As chronicled by numerous news outlets, Mapes called Lockhart to tip him off about the TANG story -- a nice way of getting the dirt on President Bush, if only it'd been true. But why repay this back-alley favor by outing her as a DNC mole deep in the bowels of CBS News?

Photos of Lockhart I've seen on the web don't reveal any sign of torture; no journalist has broken a story implicating anyone with successfully blackmailing or bribing him. So what's up, Joe?

Most likely, it's a textbook case of the Clinton damage control machine -- the world's most experienced -- kicking back into full gear. Lockhart, after all, has sufficient connections to be receive personal tips on explosive stories from CBS News bigs -- and before their story breaks. Even the best journalists should wish for such a greased line to insiders. It makes Bob Novak look positively hermitic.

So Lockhart, who's been around this block many times, occupies rarified space even as Beltway angels are measured. This covers his backside as the story unfolds -- it's called "getting out in front of the story" -- and allows him to frame it in a way most flattering, or least damaging, to himself and his kin.

But this implies that the other shoe remains suspended, ready to drop on poor Mary Mapes's head, but not on Joe's. If telling the world you've chatted with CBS about the most explosive con job (that would be by CBS, by the way, not poor Bill Burkett) in memory, one that sought to bring down a sitting president, is the lighter side of the story, what will the remainder reveal? That the DNC (or Dems in general) has received such tips from Mapes and her media allies for years? That Kerry himself knew, or at least was in a position to know, all about it? That the Dems coordinated their "Fortunate Son" attack with Mapes and others at CBS?

To boot, Lockhart is nothing if not a survivor. After all, he both coached and learned from the greatest political survivor in memory, Bill Clinton. Is it too much to think that Mary Mapes wasn't the only media big who dialed him up this past month, perhaps with information considerably more vital to his own future than anything Mapes could offer? A Howard Kurtz or Michael Dobbs, the WaPo's dynamic duo, might just have at their disposal information potentially so damaging that quick action was required by Lockhart to protect himself from the coming lethal fall-out. In that case, the future of the Kerry campaign would be the least of his worries, and Mary Mapes's sacrifice of no greater significance than stepping on a ant on the way to fetch the morning papers.

What are Joe Lockhart's motives? Therein lies the key to this story.

Update: Wizbang, citing a source who is "extremely reliable BUT not exactly in the inner circle," reports that CBS News president Heyward plan to issue a statement about the Lockhart connection. No details known.