Rove, Spinning to Protect the Brand

Karl Rove's an extremely despicable figure, but it can be helpful to follow his spin because of his strong continuing influence in Republican circles and the MSM. He's given many an interview and written many a piece attacking Obama at this point, and similar attacks will surely continue, but I've been most interested to watch his efforts to protect the brand of the GOP.

Consider his 5/8/08 editorial for the Wall Street Journal, "It's Obama, Warts and All" (via Howard Kurtz). This section was particularly interesting:

- As much as Mr. Obama's cheerleaders in the media hate it, Rev. Jeremiah Wright remains a large general-election challenge for Mr. Obama. Not only did Mr. Obama admit on "Fox News Sunday" that Mr. Wright was a legitimate issue, voters agree. Mr. Obama's favorable ratings have dropped since Mr. Wright emerged as an issue. More than half of Mrs. Clinton's supporters say it is a meaningful reflection on Mr. Obama's character and judgment.

- This will be a very difficult year for Republicans. The economy's shaky state, an unpopular war, and the natural desire for partisan change after eight years of one party in the White House have helped tilt the balance to the Democrats.

Mr. Obama is significantly weaker today than he was three months ago, but Democrats have the upper hand in November. They're beatable. But it's nonsense to think this year is going to be a replay of George H.W. Bush versus Michael Dukakis or Richard Nixon versus George McGovern.

- Mr. McCain is very competitive. He is the best candidate Republicans could have picked in this environment. With the GOP brand low, his appeal to moderates and independents becomes even more crucial.

Most of the piece focuses on bashing Obama. Rove's correct that McCain may be the best possible candidate the Republicans could have chosen, given how horribly the Bush administration has run things. As Rove acknowledges, regard for the GOP brand is low.

But Rove also falsely suggests that the press is in the tank for Obama. While it's true that many in our vapid national press corps have preferred Obama to Clinton, their regard for Obama cannot begin to compare with their adoration of Saint McCain (see the two pieces I linked here for just a sample). It's just silly to claim that the press has been downplaying Wright — they've obsessed on the story, and Rove is trying to make Wright an issue yet again. While some voters have said their opinion of Obama has dropped due to Wright, obviously Obama has still been doing quite well overall. Asking Clinton supporters about their thoughts on Wright is of course a rigged demo. Most importantly, Rove is obscuring two key points (this is Rove; of course it's deliberate). Poll data, including a joint poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal itself a week before Rove's piece, found that voters are more concerned (rightly so) about McCain's connection with Rove's former boss, George W. Bush, than Obama's connection with Jeremiah Wright. Furthermore, as Steve Benen notes (same link as previous), "A strong majority of Americans (64%), including a near majority of Republicans (47%) said the Wright issue will not have any effect on their vote." Like Benen, I'm a bit concerned about the number of voters who cite Wright as an issue (read the full post for details), but the picture Rove provides remains selective and misleading.

All of this is classic Rove spin, and good to note. However, I'd argue that this is only part of the picture. This is the paragraph that really grabbed me:

- This will be a very difficult year for Republicans. The economy's shaky state, an unpopular war, and the natural desire for partisan change after eight years of one party in the White House have helped tilt the balance to the Democrats.

Later on, Rove does admit regard for the GOP brand is low, but note the game here. Rove absolves the GOP, his former boss and himself of culpability. That's not terribly surprising. Still, who, after all, is to blame for the economy's shaky state? Rove also presents the Iraq war as "unpopular," not a catastrophically mismanaged debacle that was never necessary in the first place. Most crucially, Rove speaks of "the natural desire for partisan change." Rove is trying to sell the idea that the voters are reactionary and not particularly reflective, and that voting Democratic in November, however overwhelmingly, is just part of the normal political cycle versus a wholesale rejection of the disastrous policies of Rove, Bush, Cheney, the neocons and the rest. Of course Rove wants to tear down Obama. But the long game of Rove (50% plus one), Norquist, the K Street Project and other right-wing entities has been to make the Democrats a permanent minority if not destroy them utterly. Rove may actually believe some of what he's shilling, since he apparently really did believe the GOP could maintain power in the 2006 midterm elections, which were an earlier repudiation of his policies and politics. Regardless, even though he admits to some problems with "the brand," he's still trying to protect it from lasting harm.

Some of this is nothing new. As Digby has repeatedly pointed out, movement conservatives believe that "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)" The Sadly, No! crew has repeatedly noted how conservatives such as Jonah Goldberg and Peggy Noonan, who once embraced Bush, have since tried to disown him as a conservative since his stock has fallen. Above all, protect the brand. (See Digby's "Winning By Losing" and Sadly, No's "Everybody Hates Michelle Malkin" for recent takes on this general trend.)

Rove has continued to push this twin agenda, hack attacks on Obama and defenses of the GOP brand, in other pieces such as his 5/15/08 Wall Street Journal piece, "The GOP Must Stand for Something." After downplaying the Democrats' wins in traditionally Republican districts, Rove writes:

But that only shows the GOP can't take "safe" seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting "liberal! liberal! liberal!" in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

Why is it tough sledding for Republicans? Public revulsion at GOP scandals was a large factor in the party's 2006 congressional defeat. Some brand damage remains, as does the downward pull of the president's approval ratings. But the principal elements are the Iraq war and a struggling economy.

Gallup's 2007 report found that fewer voters identify themselves as Republicans now than at any point in the past 20 years – despite the fact that less than a fifth of Americans agree with Mr. Obama's call to rapidly withdraw from Iraq. And while many Americans are concerned about the economy, most are satisfied with their own finances.

As Republican ranks declined, the number of independents and Democrats grew. Has the bottom been reached? It's too early to know. But Americans are acknowledging progress in Iraq, economists are suggesting the economy will be in better shape this fall, and a recent ABC/Washington Post poll found GOP identification rising.

Rove's correct that yelling "Liberal!" alone might not help that much, any more than yelling "Appeasement!" (The Moderate Voice nominated Rove's op-ed for its "Ferrell-Fouts Award" for stating the painfully obvious.) In this piece, Rove sounds the same reasons as before for the public's rejection of the GOP "brand" — but the crux of his argument here rests on the idea that the public is mistaken, and that in reality, Obama is out of step with them. Rove is of course peddling absolute bullshit about Obama and Iraq. Not even the web version of Rove's op-ed provides any links for his outrageous claims, of course. But as we recently covered in a McCain-Iraq post, there's plenty of data showing Rove and McCain are on the wrong side of this issue, for example:

A new poll by ICR found 68% of Americans want Congress to use the power of the purse to bring all troops home from Iraq within the next six months. This is up from 54% last September.

Rove also misrepresents Obama's plan for withdrawal, suggesting it's both reckless and unpopular. It's unclear which specific poll Rove's citing and which question he's cherry-picking. He mentions Gallup in 2007 in passing, but Gallup and virtually every other major poll on Iraq (even those poorly worded) show the majority of the American public has opposed our continued occupation of Iraq for some time now. Obama's stances on Iraq have of course been one of his chief appeals to voters, and if anything, the American public is even more impatient to begin withdrawal than Obama is! Rove's claim that "Americans are acknowledging progress in Iraq" is selective and misleading at best. As we've covered countless times, of course there has been some progress in some areas of Iraq, but the situation overall remains horrific, and as the above poll data and other posts we've featured show, the American public overwhelmingly has not budged on the withdrawal issue. Basically, even when Rove's not completely full of shit on factual matters, his point's irrelevant.



Rove's 5/7/08 online discussion at The Washington Post provided plenty of unintentional comedy, but his penchant for combining factual inaccuracies, hackish spin and irrelevant bluster was at its finest in this exchange:

Columbus, Ohio: You boldly predicted that Bush's approval ratings would rebound -- instead he is, according to Gallup, the most unpopular president in history. Will you finally admit that your vision for this nation has been overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of the people?

Karl Rove: Get your facts right -- there are at least three president who had worse approval ratings, Truman, Johnson and Nixon. I'm absolutely positive history will be kind to this president, who made the right decisions in a difficult time for this nation.

And what about those terribly low ratings for the Democratic Congress, which I suspect you're enormously proud of.

Rove's belligerent spin here depends on a creative, deceptive reworking of the questioner's point. As CNN reported on 5/1/08:

"Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s," Holland said. "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952."

While Gallup polling goes back to the 1930s, it wasn't until the Truman years that they began surveying monthly approval ratings.

CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, "He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974."

President Nixon's disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66 percent.

In classic Rove fashion, he goes on the offensive against his questioner to cover that he ain't got nuthin'. In his response, he misrepresents "unpopular," claiming that Bush's approval rating is only the fourth worst in the history of the Gallup poll, even though Bush's disapproval rating is the worst ever, notably worse than certain-to-be-impeached Nixon before the very end. CNN also doesn't mention Johnson, but even if we grant that to Rove, not only is Rove being deceptive, even if he weren't, "Bush — Only the Fourth Most Unpopular President in History!" is hardly a great rallying cry.

Let's also note that the questioner directly criticized the Bush/Rove legacy and the GOP brand, and that Rove dodged that. Oh, and let's note for the umpteenth time that (as Rove well knows) Congress is unpopular for not sufficiently opposing Bush (that dynamic hasn't changed much since last year).

There are times Republican hacks peddle bad politics for personal gain or to please conservative audiences, and at other times it's mostly reeking desperation that leads to laughable strategies. But as a recent Roy Edroso post shows, some Republican hacks seem to be true believers in the "brand" as well, such as the National Review crowd. Edroso describes one of their recent discussions:

First, the Cornerites discussed boycotting McCain as a means to... well, I still don't know even after reading Mark Steyn: "A McCain victory with Democrat gains in Congress," he says, "would be an invitation to a one-term 'maverick' president to go on an almighty bipartisan binge." Much better, I guess, to let the Democrats run everything, so when Jesus shows up Republicans can say none of it was their fault.

Andrew Stuttaford disagrees:

If McCain is defeated, the conventional wisdom will be that the American people have decisively turned away from conservatism. The reality will, of course, be something far more complex...

Yeah, like, "The American people actually wanted to either strangle or eviscerate (slowly, in either case) every Republican they could catch, but democracy only afforded the less satisfactory alternative of voting."

...but, in the aftermath of a Democratic sweep, that's not the "narrative" that will be constructed, popularized and believed, and believed almost as much as on the right as the left.

Those bastards! And they've probably also say that their "victories" mean they have a "right" to "govern."

Rove and the National Review crowd almost always argue in bad faith, of course, and the degree to which they believe their own spin is somewhat academic. The important thing to remember is that, even while specific attacks on Obama (or any GOP target) should be challenged and debunked, it's essential to attack the GOP brand itself. As we and other liberal blogs have chronicled, McCain is essentially running for Bush's third term. Where McCain's policies haven't been identical to Bush's, they've been even worse, vague, contradictory or simply godawful. The neocons, other authoritarian movement conservatives and their leading hacks such as Rove have shown themselves impervious to reason, honor, and shame, among other things. They will never stop their destructive agenda voluntarily. It's important to beat them in November, but it's even more important for the long term to expose and discredit them for the dangerous, reckless, conscienceless thugs they are.

(Further reading I've since found: Thers' " The Trimmings of Slim Victory," Sadly, No's "Shorter Dan Riehl" and Digby's "A Majority Of Better Democrats," about the idiotic Blue Dog crowd.)


(Jeff Danzinger, 5-19-08. Click for a larger view.)

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Student Grills Karl Rove

Hat tip to Drew for sending me this Think Progress post, about a Choate student grilling Karl Rove on gay marriage. Here's a more extensive excerpt from the original article:

[Marla] Spivak, a senior from Hamden, was one of the students invited to have lunch earlier with Rove. That left her somewhat emboldened as she stood before the crowd and asked Rove to explain how giving gay people the right to marry would endanger other people.

Rove took issue with the way the first gay marriages came about, through the Massachusetts Supreme Court. An issue as important as the definition of marriage should be resolved by a legislature or a referendum, not a court, he said.

Gay couples could gain the legal rights of married couples through legislation without actually getting married, he said.

But wouldn't creating a separate body of legislation for gay people be creating a separate but equal system, a step back?, Spivak asked.

Rove replied with an answer about Mormons changing their views on marriage to conform with the nation's laws.

Spivak kept pressing. "You never actually answered, how does it threaten anyone?" she asked.

Rove asked, what's the compelling reason to throw out 5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman?

What, Spivak countered, was the compelling reason for society to allow interracial relationships when they had once been outlawed.

Then Rove invoked the Declaration of Independence before Spivak interjected that its reference to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" seemed to support her claims.

Their verbal pingpong match tapered off after Rove brought up polygamy and Spivak acknowledged that she did not know enough about polygamy to answer. Rove later asked when she planned to run for political office.

I'll give Rove credit for two things — praising the importance of studying Shakespeare, even for non-English majors a bit later, and recommending The Looming Tower. However, he ducked Spivak's question, and brought up polygamy, a slippery slope argument, to derail her. Spivak did well, but she was going up against a pretty slick hack who was able to escape with a classic logical fallacy and some other tricks. Realistically, it's doubtful he would have answered honestly. Still, just imagine if the media always pressed political figures like this. Some do, but many are content to be suck-ups and apologists for even the most authoritarian, dangerous BS.

Rove's stepfather was gay, and he was quite close with him by most accounts. It appears he even lied to the Choate students when he claimed he didn't know whether his stepfather had been gay or not, since that contradicts several public accounts of his contact with gay friends of his stepfather after his stepfather's death. In any case, his stepfather's sexuality didn't stop Rove from using a 2004 campaign strategy that depended in large part on exploiting homophobia (Al Franken sharply called the campaign "Fear, Smears, and Queers"). Rove's approach was very similar to Reagan's consistent race-baiting, even if Reagan was rather clever about it, using code words like "welfare queens." There are apologists who maddeningly claim that Reagan wasn't personally racist (I don't know if you caught the NYT editorials back and forth on this). Perhaps Reagan wasn't, although I'm not convinced — he certainly seemed both ignorant and biased, and just because that was the social norm for his crowd doesn't mean they weren't bigoted, even if Reagan was no David Duke. In Rove's case, I'd imagine he's not personally a raging homophobe. But really, who cares? Does it really matter if Rove or Reagan weren't personally bigoted when they pressed bigoted policies and exploited bigotry? Why should they get any points for that? Isn't that even worse? A Klansman is a bigoted scumbag, but at least one knows where he stands, and most of society will condemn him. But Reagan and Rove are somehow respectable because when they did something they knew if wrong, their hearts supposedly weren't in it? Aww, poor dears! Realistically, such disingenuousness is common to politics, but especially since we're talking about demonizing an entire group of people, if we're talking ethics, that's clearly wrong, or even evil.

But back to Ms. Spivak. Her conduct was fantastic. This is why I loved working with teenagers, who are consistently undersold by adults, the press, and much of our society. Yes, there's plenty of immaturity and self-absorption in the demographic as a whole, but there's also some really sharp, well-informed, conscientious young adults out there. (I certainly remember a hell of a lot of condescension when I was that age.) This election season has seen a record youth turnout, including teenagers of 17 who will be 18 in the fall coming out to vote in the primaries. That's profoundly exciting. Meanwhile, adults have been complaining about how horrible the kids are today are and how they won't listen since at least Socrates' time. Those periodic, stock pieces slamming the wastrel youth of today always lack insight, and are partially to completely full of crap. I'm not saying the young don't have a great deal to learn about the world and life, and wise mentors are always welcome, but at their best, young people have great bullshit detectors and try to keep the older, complacent and corrupt folks honest.

So good for Marla Spivak, who as a senior should be voting this fall with many others her age for the first time in a national election. (I hope it's as exciting and successful as my first voting experience was.) Welcome aboard, and keep up the good work!

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Froomkin Watch

For those that don't make Dan Froomkin's online weekday column White House Watch a staple of their reading, here's several key recent columns.

"Cheney's Secret Escalation Plan?" (Friday, 8/10/07) considers Cheney's latest plotting.

Meanwhile, Froomkin provides a great round-up on the other key force in the Bush administration, Karl Rove, in "Rove's Dismal Legacy" (Monday, 8/13/07), "Post-Rovian Thinking" (Tuesday, 8/14/07) and "Rove's Dilemma" (Wednesday, 8/15/07). I'd quote them, but there's so much good stuff it's better to just read them yourself. Many of the pieces Froomkin links deserve to be read in their entirety as well.

Finally, today Froomkin asks "Whose Report Is It, Anyway?" He considers the LA Times piece, much discussed in the liberal blogosphere, that confirms sensible suspicions about the impending Petraeus "surge" report:

"Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government."

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Beware the Ides of March!

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Caesar: Antonius!
Antony: Caesar.
Caesar: Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Antony: Fear him not, Caesar, he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Caesar: Would he were fatter!
— Julius Caesar, 1.2, 190-198, William Shakespeare

Bush’s men are both fat and still hungry. As corrupt as these men and women get, they are never satiated. But they’ve been choking these past few weeks. Our boy-emperor need not fear plots with daggers — but subpoenas are another matter.

Libby has been found guilty. The FBI’s abuse of the Patriot Act and their lies about their activities have been revealed. Alberto Gonzales has been laid bare as the fraud and liar he is. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are testing the limits of how low an approval rating can go. And Karl Rove, who is still accusing the Democrats of playing dirty politics, is watching more and more of his dirty tricks being exposed.

The more we learn about the Bush administration, the worse they look. And hallelujah, Congress is scrutinizing them, and the general public is seeing more of the truth.

A year ago, this U.S. attorney scandal, a mere fraction of the wrongdoing perpetrated by this administration, would have been furious fodder for liberal blogs, but little probably would have been done. This time, the liberal blogs were right as usual — and the mainstream media actually listened. Is this a dream? Not that all the coverage is fantastic, but isn’t this widespread furor over obvious misdeeds, incompetence and villainy exactly what’s supposed to happen? Not that everything is going well, but isn’t this cause for hope?

Did the divine inspiration and brilliant instincts of George W. Bush warn him of this? Has Dick Cheney’s unerring judgment fled to an undisclosed location? Did Karl Rove see this in the entrails of a crony, or have his powers of prognostication left him?

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Marc Antony says:

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

The truth always comes out eventually. But there’s now real hope that some of the evil can be dug out while the culprits are still alive, or even while they’re still in office. Every lie exposed and misdeed challenged is a small victory. And the permanent discrediting of these knaves and scoundrels is a matter of national security. There is providence in the fall of an attorney general. (Or something like that.)

Happy Ides of March!

Help Fight Math Illiteracy!

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)


There are those who complain the Bush administration‘s federal budget proposal is wildly unrealistic, that they undercount war casualties, and that Bush's proposed escalation could actually run up to 48,000 troops, double his claims.

Those so quick to condemn Bush would do well to remember Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity (or ignorance).

Can anyone not blindly partisan doubt that George W. Bush wants to be the very best president he can be? Can anyone doubt his commitment to excellence, and his desire to command every relevant fact on every pressing situation?

The Bush detractors are wrong. George W. Bush and his top officials are not evil, or even misguided. Instead, like millions of Americans, they hide a shameful secret: They’re not good at math.

Critics like to mock Bush reading My Pet Goat and his affection for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But while Bush does have a consistent tendency for malapropisms, this past summer he also “read three Shakespeares.” He is not illiterate in the conventional sense. But he very well may be math illiterate. And in his administration, he is far from alone.

Consider the case of chief Presidential Advisor Karl Rove, nicknamed “Bush’s Brain,” “The Architect,” and “Turd Blossom.” He’s widely considered, by Republicans and Mark Halperin, to be a “genius,” one of the smartest of the current movement conservatives. Yet who can forget this famous exchange between Rove and NPR’s Robert Siegel shortly before the 2006 midterm elections? (Full transcript here.)

MR. SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though. And many might consider you on the optimistic end of realism about --

MR. ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias or anything like that. You're just making a comment.

MR. SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you're looking at every day.

MR. ROVE: No you're not. No you're not!

MR. SIEGEL: No, I'm not --

MR. ROVE: I'm looking at 68 polls a week. You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcome --

MR. SIEGEL: -- name races between -- certainly Senate race

MR. ROVE: Well, like the polls today showing that Corker's ahead in Tennessee; or the race -- polls showing that Allen is pulling away in the Virginia Senate race.

MR. SIEGEL: Leading Webb in Virginia. Yes.

MR. ROVE: Yeah, exactly.

MR. SIEGEL: Have you seen the DeWine race and the Santorum race and -- I don't want to --

MR. ROVE: Yeah. Look, I'm looking at all these Robert and adding them up. And I add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to "the" math.

MR. SIEGEL: I don't know if you're entitled to a different math, but you're certainly entitled to --

MR. ROVE: I said you were entitled to yours.

After the GOP lost both houses, vultures such as Dan Froomkin pounced:

How did Karl Rove get everything so wrong? And shouldn't we take anything he says from this point forward with a big grain of salt?

Rove's divide-and-conquer political strategy, his insistence that Republican candidates embrace the war in Iraq as a campaign issue, his supremely self-assured predictions of victory -- all were proven deeply, even delusionally wrong last week.

His prediction that Republicans would retain both houses of Congress, in particular, is hardly explicable by "bad math" and Mark Foley.

Either Rove lied or he's clueless. Or both.

Froomkin goes on to quote Mike Allen’s interview with Rove, where the "boy genius" explained his failed predictions:

"[H]e does not believe his data let him down. 'My job is not to be a prognosticator,' he said. 'My job is not to go out there and wring my hands and say, "We're going to lose." I'm looking at the data and seeing if I can figure out, Where can we be? I told the president, "I don't know where this is going to end up. But I see our way clear to Republican control."

And apparently, although Rove loves playing head games, he wasn't just projecting confidence. He really believed what he was saying. As Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe reports:

Rove's miscalculations began well before election night. The polls and pundits pointed to a Democratic sweep, but Rove dismissed them all. In public, he predicted outright victory, flashing the V sign to reporters flying on Air Force One. He wasn't just trying to psych out the media and the opposition. He believed his "metrics" were far superior to plain old polls. Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed NEWSWEEK his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House—enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists—to study just how wrong the polls were.

His confidence buoyed everyone inside the West Wing, especially the president. Ten days before the elections, House Majority Leader John Boehner visited Bush in the Oval Office with bad news. He told Bush that the party would lose Tom DeLay's old seat in Texas, where Bush was set to campaign. Bush brushed him off, Boehner recalls. "Get me Karl," the president told an aide. "Karl has the numbers."

If a certified super-genius like Rove can be so wrong, what sort of advice must Bush be getting? And given the number of mathematical errors by the Bush administration, it can’t be just Rove. Most importantly, given that Bush hasn’t caught these mistakes, he himself must surely share in this dread, shameful condition of math illiteracy.

Bush critics bash Bush for being in a “bubble.” but perhaps they’re being very unfair. Bush constantly claims he doesn’t read the polls. But given the evidence, it may not be that he doesn’t want to. It may be that — he can’t.

Bush and Rove are honourable men — so are they all, honourable men— so what else could explain these lapses? Consider the current war in Iraq. ABC conservatively puts its current cost at one trillion dollars (and the CBO estimates that a phased withdrawal would save a half-trillion). Yet Bush administration officials said the war would pay for itself, or that Iraq would generate 18 billion in oil revenues. Alternatively, they said it would cost 100-200 billion, under 50 billion, or as Andrew Natsios, chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development repeatedly insisted, 1.7 billion. Of course, anyone can make a mistake, and ABC’s current estimate is only 589 times larger than Natois’ figure, leaving him a mere 998.3 billion off the mark (and rising). However, a trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money. It seems that many neocons and other Bush officials fit what Washington Post reporter Peter Baker said about Karl Rove: “mortal after all, and not always so good at math.”

This epidemic is not limited to math, however. Over at the Food and Drug Administration, Bush appointees struggled valiantly against with the science of Emergency Plan B. Likewise, the bold efforts of Bush appointees to rewrite NASA scientists were met with cruel derision in the reality-based community, never mind that the appointees were at least as qualified as most staffers in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Reasonable conservative Jon Swift agrees with Blogger-for-Bush Mark Noonan that 'science is dead' while far left radical Gary Trudeau argues for “situational science.” But however well-intentioned, these efforts will only embolden the enemy. If we do not fight for solid math and science education here in the United States, we’ll have to fight for it in the Middle East. There is no winning the “Long War” against terrorism without long division.


Some might argue, perhaps these Bush officials were taught, but they forgot. But surely not all of them can suffer from the poor memory of unfortunate public servant Scooter Libby. Surely it must be poor instruction. Most likely these poor men were assailed with liberal propaganda in their schools instead of being taught basic reading, math and science. They were being taught the words to “Free to Be You and Me” and forced to make macaroni pictures instead of learning basic, fundamental aspects of American law. How else can one explain the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, not understanding habeas corpus as outlined in the Constitution? How else can one explain Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA and current head of the CIA, not knowing what the 4th Amendment entails even though it's absolutely central to his job?

This is not even to bring up the horrible educational wrongs inflicted upon poor conservative pundits and rightwing bloggers. How can Frank Gaffney be expected to find out what Lincoln actually said, or to characterize him accurately? Research is a learned skill, not passed down instinctually from conservative parent to conservative child as is a trust fund. Intellectual rigour is not a birthright in the manner of a think tank position. Bush’s foes charged him with cronyism for his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and for his appointment of Michael Brown to head FEMA. However, this misses the point. Given the breadth and depth of this dire educational gap, it’s not Bush’s fault that he simply cannot nominate a single qualified candidate for anything.

Leadership in combating this problem must start at the top. That's why I propose that we immediately start a program of remedial education for our public officials that covers basic tenets of science, basic principles of American government, basic techniques of research and verification, and of course, basic math literacy. It will be similar to No Child Left Behind, except designed for politicians, their aides and allies.

Some may doubt the need for such a program. Let them consider that the Republican party represents nearly half the country, and that in 2000, the Republican party deemed that out of their entire party, George W. Bush was the individual most qualified to lead our country and the world, a colossus John Hinderaker anointed "A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius." Bush was exposed to some of the best education our nation has to offer, at Andover, Yale, and Harvard. If a man of his obvious gifts could receive such opportunities yet emerge unscathed, unchanged, uninformed and uneducated in such basic, essential knowledge — what chance do the rest of us have?

There can be no delay. Every errant keystroke on the calculator is a tiny victory for Al-Qaeda. Help Fight Math Illiteracy. Leave No Politician and Leave No Bush Official Behind!

Rove Discussed on Fresh Air

(crossposted at The Blue Herald)

Fair is foul and foul is fair;
Hover through the fog and the filthy air.
— Macbeth, 1.1, 12-13

Continuing our Macbeth theme!

On Fresh Air for Wednesday, 9/6/06, Terry Gross spoke with journalist Wayne Slater, co-author of The Architect a new book on Karl Rove (Slater is part of the same team that wrote Bush’s Brain). An excerpt is here at the Huffington Post (HP link courtesy of the indefatigable Dan Froomkin).

Irresponsible Speculation and Predictions

We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there’s no laboring i’ th’ winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following. But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.
— The Fool to Kent in the stocks, King Lear, 2.4, 66-72

(The Fool’s words are incredibly ironic, and demand a fuller post, but he’d still make one hell of a political advisor.)

While pundits and commentators exist who clearly embrace their apparent ideology, when it comes to the “chattering class,” their true love is almost always for a good political storyline above all else. Some tale or angle or event that will yield a strong column or some witty bon mots on the talk show circuit, that’s where it’s really at. Don’t you think Jay Leno wept when he had to say goodbye to Clinton and another thousand Lewinsky blow job jokes? (He still tromps them out from time to time.) Reagan might have argued that trees caused pollution and that ketchup and relish should count as vegetables in children’s school lunches, but even his detractors in the press would say he was a colorful character to write about. After George H.W. Bush was elected, Gary Trudeau in Doonesbury announced that political cartoonists were giving Bush a honeymoon week of no negative panels, “to give him a chance to get a handle on that ‘vision thing,’” and “as a way of formally thanking him for Dan Quayle.”

Many liberal bloggers are referring to tomorrow, the latest likely day for Fitzgerald to announce indictments, as Fitzmas. However, the truth is that it’s a bonanza for chatterers everywhere, with juicy material to last many a news cycle, to yield many a column or book, and to allow plenty of opportunity to posture as a sage insider on a news program. Granted, it’s a more fun time for liberals than conservatives (at least until Bush nominates another candidate for The Supreme Court). Consider the situation. Republicans hold power in all three branches of government. However, currently, the top aide to the President and the Vice President are facing possible indictment, the Vice President may face trouble as well, and at the least he appears to have publicly lied yet again. The House Majority Leader, Tom Delay, has been indicted. The Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, is being investigated for impropriety with his not-so-blind trust and has publicly lied. This is not to mention the indictments of Republicans Bob Noe in Ohio, super lobbyist Jack Abramoff (tight with Delay), and David Safavian. Add to this the Harriet Miers debacle and the truly shocking, shameful way Hurricane Katrina was mishandled. Oh yeah, and then there’s Iraq.

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post aptly observed that the passions about Plamegate run so high because “We're re-fighting the war through this case.” (Slate’s Mickey Kaus agrees somewhat but adds several other reasons). Previous details of the path to war are coming out as a result of Fitzgerald’s inquiry. Normally the real story of an administration takes time to unveil. We know much more about Nixon now than we did even five years ago, and similarly, the full truth of the Bush administration may not come out until a decade or two later. However, we may now get to know much more, much sooner than anyone anticipated. While many of the statements and rationales for the war are currently being re-examined by chatterers, now the general public seems to be taking a greater interest as well.

Kurtz’s column of Thursday, 10/27/05 did a fantastic job of providing a timeline of some key leaks in the Plamegate case, and touches on why many of these leaks likely occurred. As he observes:

...virtually every bit of information, confirmed and alleged, comes from unnamed sources -- ironically, in an investigation of who anonymously outed a CIA operative -- who are trying to shape public understanding of a complicated narrative to someone's advantage.

The result is that after two years of near-total secrecy about the CIA leak investigation, a steady stream of sometimes-conflicting information is now flowing, invariably attributed to "lawyers close to the case" or similarly opaque sources.

As special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald nears a decision on whether to seek indictments of top White House officials, lawyers involved in the inquiry are using the news media to float bits of evidence or interpretations that are favorable to their high-level clients. The maneuvering makes clear that these lawyers are fighting a two-front war, trying simultaneously to avert criminal charges while seeking acquittal in the court of public opinion.

The rush of disclosures in the closing days of an investigation is a time-tested ritual of Washington scandals, and each time the questions are the same: Who leaked and for what reason?

As a mere blogger (and a tardy, intermittent one at that), currently ranked 775,745 by Technorati in terms of influence (sorry, I find it very funny), I can’t yet pretend to full membership in the chattering class. However, I certainly can join in the chatterer tradition of wild speculation and completely off-base predictions. In fact, this is an area where bloggers often outstrip the feeble Mainstream Media (tm), or MSM, as all oh-so-hip bloggers call it. The key word in opinion journalism is not journalism, it’s opinion. Did Novak admit he was wrong about his authoritative yet wildly incorrect statement on the exact date Rehnquist would announce his retirement? No! He came up with a new opinion for a new deadline. With chatterers chaffing at the bit for Fitzgerald’s likely announcement tomorrow, now is the deadline for irresponsible prognostication, and I cannot shirk my duty. (Until, of course, there’s a new deadline and we can all shamelessly offer new opinions.)

PLAMEGATE

Most chatterers think it likely that Libby will be indicted on two to three counts: perjury, obstruction to justice, and possibly conspiracy. I’ll agree. He appears to have lied at least twice, but they are also likely compound lies. If news accounts are to be believed, it appears he lied to the grand jury about divulging Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as a CIA operative to reporters... he spoke about the matter three times with The New York Times’ Judy Miller. Most importantly, he spoke with her on the matter on June 23, 2003, before Novak’s now infamous column. Libby apparently claimed he learned of Plame’s identity from reporters, specifically NBC’s Tim Russert. Russert has publicly stated that there’s no way that could be the case, because he didn’t know Plame’s name until Novak’s column. While this is bad enough, The New York Times reported this week that Libby learned Plame’s identity from none other than Dick Cheney, about a month before Novak’s column. While Libby and Cheney would of course have the security clearance to discuss a CIA agent, they’re both experienced enough to at least say, wait, is she undercover or not? Unless, of course, anger clouded their judgment. Regardless, this would involve a compound lie from Libby... the obvious storyline would be, he tried to cover for his boss and blamed the leak on those irresponsible liberal reporters. If Cheney lied as well, then Libby had a clear motive for such action, and he wasn’t innocently mistaken... not that I find the massive memory lapses that have been claimed by many parties plausible in the first place.

In an online chat, Washington Post national political editor John F. Harris responded to a poster:

On this point, I tend to be more believing of the White House line. It has always seemed clear to me--and the evidence coming out over time has strengthened the point--that the White House motive in talking about Plame was not "to get back at Wilson." This was not about revenge. It was about trying to persuade reporters not to write about Wilson's allegations or take them seriously, because his mission to Niger was a low-level endeavor that had been cooked up lower down in the bureaucracy (with the assistance of his wife) and was not something that was done with White House knowledge. Remember, at the time, Wilson's suggestion was that of course the vice president knew about the results of his trip to Niger, because he had ordered it.

In the course of trying to knock down a damaging story--a routine activity in Washington--they obviously stepped over a line...quite possibly without fully appreciating that they were stepping across.

I think Harris nails one of the key reasons for the leak, but I feel he discounts the revenge angle too quickly. Judy Miller reports Libby as irate about Wilson. The current leaks about Libby also paint him as very upset, even obsessed. Many key members of the Bush administration, notably Rove and Cheney, are very much into the politics of revenge and retribution. If Rove did indeed tell Chris Matthews that Wilson’s wife was “fair game” (and was Matthews even subpoenaed?), then there’s a very different picture (Harris is also a bit imprecise above; Wilson never said that Cheney ordered his trip, he said that Cheney's request for more information was the reason the CIA sent him... but hey, it's a chat).

My take has always been that the Plame leak, in addition to being damage control as usual, was dirty politics as usual from the Bush administration. The problem this time is that, in addition to being unethical, this time their actions were actually illegal as well, and they got caught.

Rove. This one’s trickier. News reports state that on his fourth trip to the grand jury he told them he may well have heard Plame’s name from Libby. While this clearly seems like a move to save his own ass, this may also be a White House strategy... Libby is doomed, so let’s make him the fall guy, and blame everything on him. I would not be surprised if Rove was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. He did in fact reveal Plame’s identity to Time’s Matt Cooper, but I think at least a false statement charge is looming. Some folks feels he’s flipped on everyone, while others say he’s fighting the charges furiously and refused a plea bargain. Some say he won’t be indicted but he will continue to be investigated by Fitzgerald. Rove can claim faulty memory, but I don’t find that plausible... does the grand jury buy it? I feel one indictment at least is likely, but if indictments do not come, I would be surprised if he was not investigated further. I don’t think he sails through this clean legally (not in the short term, at least).

Rove has made many enemies over the years, who have dared not cross him further for fear of not working in the party anymore. If he topples, there will be a lot of buzzards. Large amounts of dirty laundry will come out if he is seen as through, or vulnerable. (And I’m sure I could mix in another overused metaphor if it weren’t so late now.) It sure would be nice to know if Rove was indeed directly involved with events such as the slanderous push-polling in South Carolina against John McCain.

Cheney. Some folks feel Cheney may be named as an unindicted co-conspirator. I find it hard to believe that Libby would undertake anything major without Cheney’s knowledge, but I also find it hard to believe that Cheney, despite his repeated disregard for the truth, would knowingly lie under oath if he knew he could get caught. News sources disagree as to whether his interview with Fitzgerald was under oath or not, and they also disagree about whether he met with Tenet or not. One story, from The New York Times, has Tenet telling Cheney about Plame, which would almost certainly mean Cheney requested the information. But MSNBC reported that Tenet denies he told Cheney this. So, my take is that Cheney’s hands are dirty, but may not be filthy, and he will likely not face any serious legal action. I do think his past misstatements will get some new scrutiny from the press, however.

There are other figures such as John Hannah, Stephen Hadley, Wurmer and the usual gang of Rice, Bolton, and all who also may be indicted, but this is all murkier. If someone flipped and went for a plea, it’s most likely a lower-rung (but perhaps central) person.

I would guess that one or two more people beside Libby and Rove would be indicted, although if reports are to be believed, they will not be in the White House proper, but instead from the Pentagon or even the State Department.

Is there further damning or exonerating evidence we don’t know about? Most definitely. It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out, but more importantly... what the truth is.

To bring it back to Shakespeare, and fools and knaves... I have no doubt that while Cheney is a knave, Libby will fall on his sword to save him (as folks as Halliburton did for him before when it was discovered they were illegally dealing with America’s sworn enemy Iran). I’m less sure of Rove, and the next days, weeks, and months will be revealing. He’s always seemed like something of a craven bully to me. Supposedly he’s vicious when cornered, but would he go down for Bush? Maybe. But for Libby or Cheney? I don’t know, but I think that’s less likely. And I think Bush especially would want to save Rove, and other folks of course know that.

Regardless, no one seems "foolish" enough to be an "honest broker" with Bush, who accounts depict as increasingly angry and frustrated, blaming everyone around him. No one has said to him what he has so sorely needed, something in the spirit of:

See better Lear, and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
— Kent to Lear, King Lear, 1.1, 161-162

(Wild Miers replacement speculation to follow shortly!)