Karl Rove is the Nutty Professor

I watched C-SPAN's coverage of a speech given by Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President Bush Karl Rove at George Washington University, where at two points students heckled him.

http://www.citizensugar.com/1513121

Just as the fantasy and horror of H. P. Lovecraft can make for entertaining reading, so too can the fantasy and horror of Rove make for entertaining listening. It's the kind of discourse that can cause fact checkers to throw their hands up in despair for Rove was in his usual mode of spinning like a top on all subjects great and small.

There was one curious topic that he raised and also expanded on in response to a question from a student. And this was Rove's role in fomenting a smear campaign against McCain in 2000. Particularly despicable was the push polling about McCain's daughter Bridget, who was adopted from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, suggesting rather that McCain had fathered a child from a black prostitute. Voters were asked "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" In the C-SPAN speach, Rove naturally denied any responsibility for these dirty tricks and said that a "nutty professor" from Bob Jones University had spread miscegenation rumors in church-distributed flyers and using whisper campaigns. According to the New York Times, "Richard Hand, a professor at Bob Jones University, sent an e-mail message to “fellow South Carolinians” telling recipients that Mr. McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.” Other smears include these gems: that McCain was gay and was a traitor and that his wife was drug-addicted.

All of this was just a prelude to the shameless swift-boating of Senator John Kerry during the general election. Perhaps this accounts for why McCain showed tepid excitement at Bush's endorsement and is making no secret of distancing himself from the albatross that is our president.

“Be prepared! Find the bastards. And pile on!”

That's Karl Rove's motto. Nice.

Rove's Revisionism

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2007/11/21/1/a-conversation-with-karl-rove

Last week, on CSPAN, I saw the interview with Karl Rove, including the part where he claimed that the primarily Republican Congress rather than the president created the momentum for commencing the Iraq War. I was struck by how incurious Charlie Rose was on this assertion. Most journalists would have pounced on this fat and rather lethargic rat of a lie. One of the best reconstructions of that time frame is in chapter 18 of Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack and also the president's speeches in October, 2002, most particulary the October 5th address to the nation. It is true that congressmen and journalists failed to critically assess the information that was available, going so far to not even read the National Intelligence Estimate. However, the authority to launch the attack was entirely within Bush's hands, and his rush to war will be a blot on his legacy forever.

With the perspective of time, I am now convinced that the war was initiated primarily for political reasons-- it was Bush/Karl believed a sure way of holding on to power-- and for psychological reasons-- Bush had an itch he had to scratch, perhaps a need to eclipse or rectify the failures of his father.

George Orwell said that "who controls the past controls the future." But, despite Rove's attack on history, it is clear that he no longer controls the past or the future.

Rove and Libermann's Parallel Universe

Here is Karl Rove and Joe Lieberman's alternate reality.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010843

The list of Congress's failures grows each month. No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform. No progress on renewing No Child Left Behind. Precious little action on judges and not enough on reducing trade barriers. Congress has not done its work. And these failures will have consequences.

Democrats had a moment after the 2006 election, but now that moment has passed. They've squandered it. They have demonstrated both the inability and unwillingness to govern. Instead, after more than a decade in the congressional minority, they reflexively look for short-term partisan advantage and attempt to appease the party's most strident fringe. Now that Democrats have the reins of congressional power, their true colors are coming out and the public doesn't like what it sees.

The Democratic victory in 2006 was narrow. They won the House by 85,961 votes out of over 80 million cast and the Senate by a mere 3,562 out of over 62 million cast. A party that wins control by that narrow margin can quickly see its fortunes reversed when it fails to act responsibly, fails to fulfill its promises, and fails to lead.

The president has made it clear that he will veto every bill that comes his way, not in its merits but to preserve what remains of his base. While the Democratic veto was narrow, if anything, the political trends remains strongly in the Democrat's favor with the death toll of our troops at record highs. Also at record highs: the price of gold, oil, hatred for the president's policies, and foreclosures.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f8eee44-8e67-11dc-8591-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

In his most outspoken attack on fellow Democrats since he was unsuccessfully challenged last year by Ned Lamont, a liberal Democrat, for his Senate seat in Connecticut, Mr Lieberman yesterday said he might not vote for the Democratic presidential nominee next year.
He argued that George W. Bush and the Republican presidential candidates remained truer than the Democratic party to its tradition of a "moral, internationalist, liberal and hawkish" foreign policy that was established by presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

"The Democratic party I grew up in was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders," he said.

"[Today's Democrats] are inclined to see international problems as a result of America's engagement with the world and are viscerally opposed to the use of force - the polar opposite to the self-confident and idealistic nationalism of the party I grew up in."

Did Lieberman sleep through the Viet Nam war era? It says much for our upside down values that preemptive war is somehow an act of moral self-confidence and idealistic nationalism. At present, because the Democratic party's control of the Senate rests on a single person, Lieberman's power is at its height. But, if he really had the courage of his convictions, why doesn't he declare that he is a Republican? In the short term, he would lose seniority as a Democrat and thus key committee positions. In the long run, he can see like everyone except for Rove that the Democratic Party will gain Senate in 2008, this reducing the need for the rest of the party to pander to Lieberman. But I wish Lieberman would switch to the Grand Old Party as he is a Democrat only in the same sense that Hitler was a Christian-- but self-assertion only.

Rove's Obsession

Last week, Rove on the Sunday talk shows, attacked Clinton while declining to disparage any other Democratic candidate, noting:

"She enters the general election campaign with the highest negatives of any candidate in the history of the Gallup poll," Rove said.

"It just says people have made an opinion about her. It's hard to change opinions once you've been a high-profile person in the public eye, as she has for 16 or 17 years."

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3505777

Tactically, I believe this is a mistake. Rove believes Hillary is the weakest Democratic candidate, and that his attacks will make her ascendency more likely. His main point appears that people won't vote for someone they don't like-- as if this was a race for the high school student council. However, with Bush's approval rating in the low 30s, all that the Democrats need to do is to run against Bush's phantom in the general election, making 2008 a referendum on the stewardship of the Bush administration. I think Hillary is almost devoid of charisma, but I think people will vote against the Republicans no matter who is the Democratic candidate. The strongest attack on Hillary is not on whether or not she has high negatives but whether or not she is what she says she really is. She has gone through so many mutations and has also played rather loose with the truth at imes while surrounding herself with a inner ring of toadies I may justly wonder if a Clinton II administration will be much different that a Bush II administration. But I think this kind of an attack would work best in the primaries rather than in the general election.

If Rudy is the candidate, I think Hillary has a strong shot at becoming president, as Rudy's liberalism cancels out Hillary's liberalism and his negatives (at least when they become more fully explored) outweigh Hillary's negatives. These include Rudy's draft dodging, his civil rights records as major, his non-spin actions on 9/11, his serial marriages and family strife, and his embrace of an interventionist military.

Rove Quits A Sinking Ship

Après Rove le déluge.

It appears that Tony Snow and others will also be resigning soon.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/16/more-resignations-to-come/

The departure of Karl surely seals the end of the Bush administration and the end of GOP governance for what may well be the next generation. So, in that respect, he is the gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats. Bush's immigration and social security reforms and Katrina were all intended to starve the beast-- what the Republican saw as the illusion of a competent and caring government. The firing of the attorney generals, the outing of a CIA operative, and the use of a racist smear campaign against McCain in the 2000 election are but a few of his triumphs. But these truely pale next to the administration's use of the 9/11 attacks to strip America of its civil liberties and launch a wretched war of choice.

Rove Still Isn't Hip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWRSgjDEQy0&mode=related&search=

White House E-Mails

The White House may be reflecting on the role e-mails are playing in the imminent resignation of Mr. Gonzales.

The publication of the several dozen e-mails and blackberry transmissions converys more than just the chatter of evolving policy. It reveals for anyone who cares to contact a Department of Justice or White House official e-mail address formats. These are typically Firstname_Lastname@address or FirstinitialLastname@address. It's encouraging to know that we have such accessible government.

Secondly, it reveals the making of a conspiracy-- not just who said what to who but who cc'd in who. Now, it may be possible although difficult to fabricicate a Mission Impossible-like conspiracy by having an insider get control of Karl Rove's address and e-mail a subordinate a false directive that in turn sets off a chain of more e-mails. But the prima facie evidence that Bush's Brain is behind these e-mails appears compelling.

A common guideline passed down by old White House hands is to never keep a diary. The tale of countless scandels shows that it can take but a single line in your late night musings to politically hang you. In view of the havoc that e-mails can cause, I suspect the use of e-mails as a means to conduct bureaucratic evil may be coming to an end.

To the Victor Belongs the Spoils

The phrase "to the victor belongs the spoils" refers to the practice in which the winning party gives its followers government jobs as a reward for working towards victory. The practice is distinguished from awarding offices on the basis of merit. More broadly, this phrase can also refer to policies that benefit one party.

Today, there are reports that
the New Mexico Republican party chairman urder presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

"Anyone with any experience within the Justice Department is completely shocked and appalled by what has been described," said Stanley Hunterton, a former federal prosecutor of 12 years who investigated organized crime in Detroit and Las Vegas. "One of the things the Department has stood for was being apolitical. Sure, politics does gets involved in the appointment process, but this is just nuts."

I cannot say that I'm especially shocked. Hasn't it always been thus, that the party in power will award the plum jobs and advantegous rulings to its political constituency? I think this helps explain the Scooter Libby conviction as well-- that all will be forgiven so long as there is loyalty up.

As Frank Rich notes in today's Sunday New York Times column: "Even by Washington's standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby."
Of course he will. A president who tries to void laws he doesn't like by encumbering them with 'signing statements' and who regards the Geneva Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn't going to start playing by the rules now. His assertion last week that he is 'pretty much going to stay out of' the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon is whether Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans' political fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008."

The main and perhaps the only thing that deters a permanent spoils system is a healthy two-party system. And the prospect that Bush and Cheney will bequeath to a Democratic president and vice president the imperial power that they wrested over eight years must give many Republicans of a traditionalist and liberterian coloration pause. It could very well be that some day President Clinton and Vice President Obama will be writing signing statement, firing attorney generals, and launching preemptive wars.

Ralph Waldo Emerson notes in "Compensation" that there is "no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. You cannot recall the spoken word, you canot wipe out the foot-track. Always some damning circumstance transpires." And the most damning circumstance that will be Bush's legacy may well be a Democratic establishment that embraces and executes the methods and procedures of the Republican establishment, so much so, that, as in the last page of Animal Farm, no one can tell the difference between the humans and the pigs, the Democrats and the Republicans.