Posted by D. Cupples | I can't help feeling sorry for former White House advisor Karl Rove, having read his op-ed in today's Opinion Journal. The man isn't even on salary anymore, yet the unnamed they are making him publicly drool nonsense, like my great aunt used to do at the Thanksgiving table after she'd exceeded her sherry limit.
Isn't it enough that Mr. Rove spent six years making the public believe that he had no grasp of foreign policy, economics or military affairs? True, Mr. Rove dodged the Vietnam war draft, so he probably doesn't know much about military stuff, but do they have to make it so obvious? Isn't it enough that they made him spend years creating and repeating neat-sounding phrases that made their creator appear terribly ignorant or deceptive?
Mr. Rove has paid his dues, so you'd think they would let him take a stab at reclaiming his dignity and self-respect. Apparently not. In today's op-ed, for example, they made him write:
"Now that Democrats have the reins of congressional power, their true colors are coming out and the public doesn't like what it sees."
Mr. Rove knows the polls show that the public dislikes and distrusts congressional Republicans even more than Dems ( BN-Politics-1). And yet, the unnamed they made him appear embarrassingly unaware.
In another paragraph, they made him...
criticize congressional Democrats for having "launched more than 400 investigations" -- you know, those pesky probes into government waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption.
Having been privy to the "back room" for so long, Mr. Rove knows how necessary those investigations were (and still are). Privately, I'd bet that he is cheering on John Conyers, Patrick Leahy and especially Henry Waxman.
They also made Mr. Rove blast Dems for having "stiff-armed their Republican colleagues," after promising bipartisanship once they took so-called "control" of Congress. Everyone knows that Mr. Rove knows simple arithmetic, as he proved when tallying votes during Election 2000 -- while manuevering to keep some from being counted, no less. And he knows that Senate Republicans have been filibustering bills left and right, essentially holding Congress and the American People hostage.
It gets better. They made Mr. Rove attack Dems for trying to end the Iraq war:
"They continue to try to implement this course, which would lead to chaos in the region, the creation of a possible terror state with the third largest oil reserves in the world, and a major propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden as well as for Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah."
I'm not sure what Mr. Rove (or they) meant by a "propaganda victory." Would bin Laden win a 22K gold trophy from some U.N. committee with a weird sense of humor?
But notice Mr. Rove's heartfelt concern that ending the Iraq war would leave the Mid-East in chaos and vulnerable to terrorist activity. By making him write this, they made Mr. Rove appear to have been stupidly or heartlessly unconcerned about chaos and terrorist activity before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
Having been privy to White House briefings, Mr. Rove knows that pre-war intelligence reports warned the Bush Administration that unseating Sadaam Hussein would likely cause chaos and increase terrorist activity. He also knows that our invasion of Iraq actually created chaos and fueled terrorist activity there. Al Qaeda in Iraq didn't even exist until after the U.S. invaded.
It wasn't enough that they made Mr. Rove push for the invasion back in 2003. Now, with today's op-ed, they have gone and made him look not only stupid but also hypocritical.
Speaking of hypocrisy, they also made Mr. Rove give a speech about politics and the Internet, according to Think Progress, at which he said:
"The Web has given angry and vitriolic people more of a voice in public discourse....
“I’m a fan of many blogs. I visit them frequently and I learn a lot from them,” Mr. Rove said. “But there also blogs written by angry kooks.”
This I cannot comprehend. Why on Earth would they make Mr. Rove insult the very people who helped his former boss re-take the White House in 2004?
How much tarnish can one man's reputation endure? Mr. Rove gave his resignation. End of Story. Next thing you know, they will be pushing Fox to offer him his own TV show. Why can't the unnamed they just leave him alone and let him enjoy life as a private citizen?
See other bloggers' reactions at Memeorandum.
D.
You gotta give Karl his fantasies to play with. It's tough being the guy who was in charge of building a generation of Republican rule— and ended up being the one who let it all go down the tubes.
Posted by: billkav | November 10, 2007 at 06:22 AM