The smarter Rove is alleged to be, the stupider Bush is admitted as being. I can’t even name Reagan’s campaign manager; he at some sort of record to run on.

Bush? Nothing. Coke-head.

His manager MUST be a genius.

1. A sense of morality / decency / empathy

2. Fear that they will backfire : if exposed they SHOULD be even more damaging to your own campaign and also damaging to future campaigns you’re involved in.

The fact is there are and will always be sociopaths who are completely immune to #1. What really bothers me is how much the last few years have shown that #2 is almost completely negligible. The chattering heads who set conventional wisdom always want to let bygones be bygones. The day after the election, the attitude becomes “who cares who actually planted the mic? Who cares where the rumor of McCain’s illegitimate black child started? It’s over.” And all the future Rove wannabes are learning this lesson as well.

Obviously the same principal applies beyond mere elections. The Bush administration doesn’t need to keep all the evidence of illegal activity corked forever. They just need to stall until Jan. 1 2009, and then anybody who says “hey, maybe some of these crimes still need to be punished even if they aren’t happening anymore…you know, kind of like how it works for everybody else in the world” will be painted as vindictive, backwards looking partisans.

Jake Squid
August 14, 2007 at 10:26 am

You know, part of appearing to be a genius is having world-class incompetents as your opponents. This is especially true if we look at the presidential campaigns of ‘00 & ‘04. The fact is that both Gore and Kerry ran tremendously poor campaigns.

Indeed, they did. All my confidence that Kerry at any rate would win handily (in any remotely honest election, anyway) was based on my belief that W had created a solid “anyone but Bush” by his actions. After the Dem convention I became convinced that Kerry might in fact make a decent President–but in part that’s because the standards are now so low. Just as Tom Tomorrow has mocked Matt Drudge as “someone who scooped a story, once,” Kerry was basically “someone who has a few times in his life shown some integrity and intelligence.” Which would be a big step up. And yet, not so much really.

Gore on the other hand has a lot on the ball, and is a decent guy.

So why did they fumble so badly?

I really think we are looking at the playing out of deep ideological currents here, which run in conjunction with the class structure of power in this country. The very reasons I think Clinton, Carter, Gore, Kerry–heck, even Dukakis (I draw the line at Mondale though, even though he’s the first Presidential candidate I ever voted for in a general election…) were and are better than their rivals are directly related to why they come across as weak-willed, vacillating, shifty, even insincere. Their reactionary rivals have the advantages of the qualities Rove distills–a combination of fact-proof True Belief and ruthless hunger for power, which makes them immune to moral qualms and fitting intstruments of the collective interests of capital.

Now the Dems are also instruments of the collective interests of capital, but even the worst of them do insist on a less instinctive, more intelligent and balanced view of what those interests ought to be. They are more in touch with the Capraesque self-image of US ideology–but less so with the real bases of power.

A strong progressive leader must be unafraid to cut themselves loose from those ideological moorings to our past that have become clearly falsified. They must look ahead, not back, to a new form of populism, which is the only countervailing force to greed. Not erudition, not wonky cleverness, not gentle soothing words–not even strong and unbending ethics (if any US politician could get anywhere encumbered with those!) can stand up against the influence of the powers that be–only a positive vision of new powers that could be can do that.

It is a funny thing how in the sense of which party is innovating (albeit in appaling ways) and which one appeals to doing things the way we used to do them in the past, that the Democrats are the true conservatives and the Republicans are the radicals. One might even say that the Republicans are “progressives,” if one bears in mind that progress need not be in a good direction.

“Have you no idea of progress, of development?”
“I have seen them both, in an egg. We call it going bad in Narnia.”

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

It is the clear vision of the destination we should be progressing toward that is lacking among the anointed politicians; the boldest and best say deep change is needed and they are right so far–but they are clearly either unclear on where those will lead us, or too cautious to say it out loud. Either way, this is why they look weak and uncertain, and all the incredible folly of the Shrums and Rahm Emmanuels and so on follows logically from this lack of vision and desire to pass as not really so very different from the Democrats of the past.

In one of Rove’s early campaigns, the incumbent was a judge who had a sterling reputation as a champion of children’s issues. Most people would give their opponent the courtesy of acknowledging his leadership on an issue like that, or at least stay away from the issue so as not to burnish the opponent’s image by talking about it. But that would be treating a strength as a strength.

Rove’s solution? Start a whispering campaign against the judge saying he’s a pedophile. Now all those heartwarming pictures of the judge surrounded by cute smiling children suddenly take on a sinister look. Now that judge has to say over and over, “I am not a pedophile!” or risk looking weak on the Pedophile Question. Now the question of whether the judge is a pedophile or not becomes a Controversy. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? The smoke only has to last until Election Day. Then there’s a new judge, and a person with a lifetime of dedicated public service is out of a job and his character is permanently tarnished by association with the Controversy.

You saw it again with the Swift Boating of John Kerry. A man who served honorably in a war lost against a cokehead draft-dodger, because his war record, the root of his “electability,” was transformed into a liability instead of an asset. You have to admit it takes a certain amount of cleverness to come up with that.

That really is, and has always been, Rove’s power.

William Bennett (yeah, him, must have been taking a breather from the tables) was expounding on CNN or NBC (can’t remember which) about Rove’s political genius.

Genius, my sweet apples! Utter lack of morals and integrity is more like it.

Rent “Bush’s Brain.”

It seems some people believe Rove planted a bug in his own office and called the police to make the populace think his opponent was bugging his office.

It seems some people believe Rove began a whispering campaign that McCain had an illegitimate baby of color to defeat McCain in the S.C. primary (nothing like playing the race card against a man who adopted children of a different color).

It seems some people believe Rove is Lee Atwater’s successor in the politics of dirty tricks.

Some people even believe Rove played shenanigans with his College Republicans elections.

If Rove’s a genius, Ted Bundy had superpowers.