Rove
Karl Rove is leaving the White House - one would hope for good - at the end of August.
I've often, like many Progressives, wondered whether Rove was truly "Bush's Brain," or whether he was more the executioner of the King's will. Was he the power behind the thrown, or was he Luca Brasi to Bush's Vito Corleone?
For a long time I saw him more as the brains of the outfit, a political no-holds-barred kingmaker who picked up the dumb malleable faux populist silver spoon dry drunk son of a former president and made lemonade out of a very sour lemon. And there still is some truth to that. But, from what I've read, that isn't the end of the story.
Because Georgie isn't just Rove's clay doll - he's everybody's. The Neocons saw what Rove was doing to Georgie and they jumped in. They saw a know-nothing blue blood who thought he could tell everything about a person from the glint in their eye and the firmness of their handshake. And, like Rove, they saw a sucker they could brainwash like the Manchurian Candidate.
Rove is only political in the sense that he is completely made of politics, but has very little in the way of ideology. He favours those things that he thinks he can sell. He strongly favours those things that can be used as currency to buy support from rightists. Tax cut are only viable if they serve as a pay-off for the support of the wealthy and corporations. So, of course, they're perfect.
Does Rove favour secret prisons and torture? I'd guess not - only because it hurts his guy politically. There's nothing in secret prisons and torture and all that which can help his agenda.
And that agenda is perfectly clear: complete political domination by the Repub party. It permeates everything this administration does. And that, finally, will be Rove's legacy.
Nothing is off the table for him. Formerly sacred duties to justice - like the whole justice department - are tools to help win elections. Race baiting in particular is a key ploy to get the white robes to the voting booth.
I think one of his real strengths has always been his ability to appeal to white racists, the the kind of Southern white voter who believes in "reverse discrimination." I think there is a strong undercurrent of racism in American like those vast underground reservoirs of fresh water that we tap into for our daily use. Rove knows that there are lots of voter out there who would never say a racist word, but feel the tugs of their fathers' and grandfathers' Jim Crow attitudes.
Jim-Bob III doesn't say he hates anybody, but he would never vote for a black politician, and thinks those white-robe boys have a point about a few things, but he knows joining up would wreck his career. His father used to say the "N-word" all the time and would have joined the KKK if it was convenient. Grandpappy did join and marched with them (they had millions of members from coast to coast and even in the Northeast in the early part of t he 20thy century).
Rove could talk to Jim-Bob, and all the Jim-Bobs out there. He also knew how to scare the shit out of people. From September 12, 2001, he had his political axe out. While everybody else was going all soft and gooey about 'unity,' he took that axe and started chopping. He drove 9-11 as the excuse to impose complete political domination over the country.
But I don't think he was the one who actually used the power. While he was consolidating, Rummy and Cheney were planning - the invasion of Iraq they'd wanted for years. The Patriot Act that would give them dictatorial powers. The huge secret CIA infrastructure of secret prisons and worldwide bases to impose the iron fist on virtually everyone.
Rove is lost when he's given power to use. His grim ability is in its acquisition by any means necessary. He was hopeless when in charge of domestic policy - the fumbling attempt to eliminate Social Security was his baby, as was the original failures to react to hurricane Katrina, as well as the pathetic attempts to recover. The fact that the relief effort is a complete failure and has helped only the foreign-based reconstruction companies is sadly no surprise to anyone.
Rove's legacy is that he was the first man to use the executive branch of the American government as a totally partisan branch of one political party. From justice to science to the military to the government services agency to the State Department - it was all sold out. And the sad part for him is that it's all a complete failure.
None of it works. The budget is in shambles. The State Department can't get anything done because no other government will deal with us - they know us for what we are. The military is a complete wreck, a "broken force" from the army to the National Guard to the Marines. We can only hope the navy is still afloat.
Rove's legacy is that by giving the extreme right the power to do anything they wanted, they proved conclusively that they are wrong about everything. Everything they believe in, front 'trickle-down economics' to military force restructuring to neocon foreign policy has been demonstrated to be utterly the exact wrong thing to do in the world.
What's next? He talks about writing a book. That should be interesting.
My guess is that he lays somewhat low, making some heavy money from the fascist speakers circuit. The current group of Repubs is pathetic, and there's nobody, I think, he wants to help. The devastation that he's helped bring upon the federal government will make the next president's job untenable, so he'll wait until 2012 to play kingmaker again.
It will be the un-fixable mess that he's left that will help him in 2012 - after all, why didn't Hilary fix Iraq? Why didn't Obama balance the budget? Why didn't Edwards keep torturing and why did he close all the gulags?
In the end, we have a man who is as un-American as Joseph Stalin - or Joseph Goebbels. He does not 'get' America at a fundamental level. He doesn't see it as a country shared equally by its citizens. He sees it as a giant shell game, a contest to see who can get the most out of it using whatever methods will work.
He gave Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Condo the power to do whatever they wanted - and look where we are.
Shame. Deep deep shame.
I've often, like many Progressives, wondered whether Rove was truly "Bush's Brain," or whether he was more the executioner of the King's will. Was he the power behind the thrown, or was he Luca Brasi to Bush's Vito Corleone?
For a long time I saw him more as the brains of the outfit, a political no-holds-barred kingmaker who picked up the dumb malleable faux populist silver spoon dry drunk son of a former president and made lemonade out of a very sour lemon. And there still is some truth to that. But, from what I've read, that isn't the end of the story.
Because Georgie isn't just Rove's clay doll - he's everybody's. The Neocons saw what Rove was doing to Georgie and they jumped in. They saw a know-nothing blue blood who thought he could tell everything about a person from the glint in their eye and the firmness of their handshake. And, like Rove, they saw a sucker they could brainwash like the Manchurian Candidate.
Rove is only political in the sense that he is completely made of politics, but has very little in the way of ideology. He favours those things that he thinks he can sell. He strongly favours those things that can be used as currency to buy support from rightists. Tax cut are only viable if they serve as a pay-off for the support of the wealthy and corporations. So, of course, they're perfect.
Does Rove favour secret prisons and torture? I'd guess not - only because it hurts his guy politically. There's nothing in secret prisons and torture and all that which can help his agenda.
And that agenda is perfectly clear: complete political domination by the Repub party. It permeates everything this administration does. And that, finally, will be Rove's legacy.
Nothing is off the table for him. Formerly sacred duties to justice - like the whole justice department - are tools to help win elections. Race baiting in particular is a key ploy to get the white robes to the voting booth.
I think one of his real strengths has always been his ability to appeal to white racists, the the kind of Southern white voter who believes in "reverse discrimination." I think there is a strong undercurrent of racism in American like those vast underground reservoirs of fresh water that we tap into for our daily use. Rove knows that there are lots of voter out there who would never say a racist word, but feel the tugs of their fathers' and grandfathers' Jim Crow attitudes.
Jim-Bob III doesn't say he hates anybody, but he would never vote for a black politician, and thinks those white-robe boys have a point about a few things, but he knows joining up would wreck his career. His father used to say the "N-word" all the time and would have joined the KKK if it was convenient. Grandpappy did join and marched with them (they had millions of members from coast to coast and even in the Northeast in the early part of t he 20thy century).
Rove could talk to Jim-Bob, and all the Jim-Bobs out there. He also knew how to scare the shit out of people. From September 12, 2001, he had his political axe out. While everybody else was going all soft and gooey about 'unity,' he took that axe and started chopping. He drove 9-11 as the excuse to impose complete political domination over the country.
But I don't think he was the one who actually used the power. While he was consolidating, Rummy and Cheney were planning - the invasion of Iraq they'd wanted for years. The Patriot Act that would give them dictatorial powers. The huge secret CIA infrastructure of secret prisons and worldwide bases to impose the iron fist on virtually everyone.
Rove is lost when he's given power to use. His grim ability is in its acquisition by any means necessary. He was hopeless when in charge of domestic policy - the fumbling attempt to eliminate Social Security was his baby, as was the original failures to react to hurricane Katrina, as well as the pathetic attempts to recover. The fact that the relief effort is a complete failure and has helped only the foreign-based reconstruction companies is sadly no surprise to anyone.
Rove's legacy is that he was the first man to use the executive branch of the American government as a totally partisan branch of one political party. From justice to science to the military to the government services agency to the State Department - it was all sold out. And the sad part for him is that it's all a complete failure.
None of it works. The budget is in shambles. The State Department can't get anything done because no other government will deal with us - they know us for what we are. The military is a complete wreck, a "broken force" from the army to the National Guard to the Marines. We can only hope the navy is still afloat.
Rove's legacy is that by giving the extreme right the power to do anything they wanted, they proved conclusively that they are wrong about everything. Everything they believe in, front 'trickle-down economics' to military force restructuring to neocon foreign policy has been demonstrated to be utterly the exact wrong thing to do in the world.
What's next? He talks about writing a book. That should be interesting.
My guess is that he lays somewhat low, making some heavy money from the fascist speakers circuit. The current group of Repubs is pathetic, and there's nobody, I think, he wants to help. The devastation that he's helped bring upon the federal government will make the next president's job untenable, so he'll wait until 2012 to play kingmaker again.
It will be the un-fixable mess that he's left that will help him in 2012 - after all, why didn't Hilary fix Iraq? Why didn't Obama balance the budget? Why didn't Edwards keep torturing and why did he close all the gulags?
In the end, we have a man who is as un-American as Joseph Stalin - or Joseph Goebbels. He does not 'get' America at a fundamental level. He doesn't see it as a country shared equally by its citizens. He sees it as a giant shell game, a contest to see who can get the most out of it using whatever methods will work.
He gave Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Condo the power to do whatever they wanted - and look where we are.
Shame. Deep deep shame.
posted by fiduciary at 7:46 AM
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