A Fair and Balanced Look at Karl Rove

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/9/05 at 8:25am

Maybe I'm too hard on Karl. Here's a fair and balanced look at Mr. Decency.

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KARL THE UNHOLY

Rove's guilty, but is he guilty?

By Avery Walker | RAW STORY COLUMNIST

I must say that I am very, very disappointed in you. And by you, I don't mean my incredible readers out there. I mean humanity. I was gone just six weeks, and frankly, you let the place go to hell.

While I was away: O’Connor retired, allowing Bush to nominate a mysterious conservative who has a soft spot for torture and an anti-choice activist wife; Liberals and moderates on the Supreme Court blew a fifth amendment decision so royally that there now isn’t a single justice on the court deserving the respect of any American; Mariah Carey returned to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, where she has been allowed to reign for 8 weeks; Diplomacy hit such a low point that Condoleezza Rice now appears to be the last ‘good guy’ in world headlines; London has been hit by terrorist attacks, none of which will likely inspire the name of a delicious Guinness and Bailey’s concoction; Arnold Schwarzenegger called another absurd special election before leading California into the first stages of exactly the same sort of power crisis that allowed him to steal his predecessor’s job; and that bastion of human enlightenment, Mississippi, ruled that the poor have no right to a state-paid attorney.

At least there’s one constant in the universe—one man who will never let us down. Karl Rove (or, as the Book of Revelations refers to him, "The Beast,") is and will always be a being of unadulterated evil. I could try to explain why what Rove is accused of doing was wrong (as Bill O’Reilly did so amusingly, in a column that could have been scribbled out in crayon within the margins of See Spot Run,) but I think that’s rather obvious. Outing an undercover agent for your homeland’s Intelligence Agency is an act of treason, pure and simple. What is interesting about the Rove allegation isn’t that he’s a suspect; it's that he’s so profoundly evil that expectations seem to grant him a certain level of protection.

The public trust isn’t broken, because, well… there is no public trust of Rove. They couldn't care less. More than that, Rove's wicked tactics make equally likely his outing of Plame, his innocence in the affair, and his ability to have done so without bloodying his own hands.

Did Rove out Valerie Plame Wilson? Americans don’t ask so much as nod, say, “Sounds like something he’d do,” and go about their business as usual. His work is widely recognized as the most corrupt, unethical, heartless, fiendish, villainous, sinful, unprincipled, vicious, evil, egregious, heinous, contemptible, immoral, amoral, mean, nasty, rotten, vile, shameful, shameless, and generally most often on the wrong side of the “shalt nots” in the business… But he is still not necessarily guilty of this particular misdoing. The fact that he is so politically dissolute is just one more reason one must be especially careful when leveling charges at him.

High expectations set by Rove’s intensely nefarious behavior simply do not, repeat do not, make his guilt as certain as the media feeding frenzy would have one believe. There were other sources for the stories who could just as easily have seen these memos. The trial-by-speculation happening in the echo chamber that passes for the American media is occurring because journalists are more likely to run with a good shout-party based on innuendo than actually dig for substantial proof of Rove’s guilt or innocence, not because a criminal investigation is near conclusive.

Though widespread timelines regarding the dates of Rove’s conversations with reporters and the distribution of the highly classified memo do indicate that he lied right over his forked tongue when hissing backwards at least one untruth about the Plame affair (that he had heard about her occupation from a reporter,) this does not by any means finger him as the party directly responsible for giving her identity away. Remember, the devil mixes lies with the truth, and Christmas Baby Rove is, at the very least, a patron of the Dark Arts.

Karl Rove never deals in facts—at least not when it comes to the media. His silence on key points would feel damning, if we didn’t know this to be a tactic employed by him in the past. Public denials can make damaging sound bites, and Rove isn’t about to drop his dignified air of unmitigated cruelty for an arm-waving denial of any allegation, true or false. Rather, Karl Rove delights in discrediting the bringers of the truth, and there is nothing that would have him clicking those cloven hooves higher than a media smearfest that targeted him and came up wrong. Why lie and say that the President served out his commitment to the Texas Air National Guard when Rove (himself a draft dodger,) when Rove could simply let false documents somehow make their way into the lazy hands of CBS Producers? If your enemies are embarrassed on any point, you look better by default, and Rove’s enemies are lining up to take a fall if this allegation comes up false.

Rove's only interests are in keeping his bosses looking squeaky clean, smearing their opponents, and discrediting the truth through misinformation. This is simply how Rove operates. In 1986, he announced that his office for the campaign of Republican Bill Clements had been bugged by Democrats. He offered absolutely no evidence—not so much as a single piece of found equipment. Was Rove too lazy to make a trip to Radio Shack, or did he know that any evidence he offered could be proven wrong? Still, the smear turned the razor-thin poll margins to Clements’ favor. Lessons: Karl doesn't deal in facts, and if he can play the victim, he will. In building that image, Rove is unlikely to be a slave to law or morality.

Quick background on Mr. Decency: While a protégé of Watergate conspirator Donald Segretti, Rove snuck into Alan Dixon’s campaign headquarters, swiped a stack of the office letterhead, and whipped up fliers for the Democrat’s posh campaign rally. They promised, "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing." He then handed them out at homeless shelters, wild parties and rock concerts. Dixon became State Treasurer, then Senator. Rove went on to lead the College Republicans.

By 1973, Karl was touring the nation teaching dirty political tricks to young GOP, recounting his exploits in tapes secured by the Washington Post. Rove claimed the tapes were edited to remove a “Kids, don’t try this at home,” disclaimer. Bush Sr. investigated Rove for the wrongdoing recounted on the tapes, forced out a political rival of Rove’s who was believed to have leaked the tapes, and hired little Karl to help revive his withering political career.

Karl’s black, leathery wings were barely even coming in, and he had hardly learned at this point to cover his tracks. Or, if you believe him, he had yet to to discover his true calling as the world’s most honest political operative. Though there is ample documentation of his early shenanigans (and by "shenanigans," I mean abominable, criminal acts designed to undermine our democracy,) most of Rove’s subsequent sinister doings are more legend than proven fact.

Rove's signature, yellowed fang marks are not often found on the bodies of his victims, but terrible fates seem to befall all those who challenge Rove’s dark lords. When Bush Jr. ran against Anne Richards for Governor of Texas, voters began receiving calls asking if they would be less likely to vote for her if they discovered that her office was dominated by lesbians. A phone poll during the 2000 primaries asked voters if they would be less likely to vote for John McCain if they knew that he had fathered an illegitimate black child. McCain’s adopted daughter is from Bangladesh, and he wasn’t shy about showing her off on the campaign trail. Other whispers spread about McCain during this time period included rumors that he was a stoolie for his captors in Vietnam, and had been driven mad by the war. Luckily, Rove's boy Bush was able to fight the Vietnam War right here in the continental United States.

Rove may not have been behind those push polls, but whoever was did so as an agent of the man who is now President of the United States. Also, the anti-Christ. And there is a special seat in Hell waiting for them. My only question is whether or not it’s the throne.

Clearly falsified documents, discs and DAT tapes are said to have been found by Rove’s perceived enemies, containing damaging information about his clients that, if made public, would have made the bearers look like frauds. In 1992, Rove left Bush Sr.’s campaign. Many believe he was fired by Bush's team for leaking information to… Any guesses? Bob Novak.

The moment Plame’s identity was revealed, anyone who had ever heard the name Karl Rove assumed an 80% likelihood that Rove was behind it… Somehow. Speculation was restricted to which bumbling Bushie he tricked into doing it (Bolton was a popular guess,) and, on the outside chance that he did have the audacity to do it himself, how Novak ever managed to get the smell of goat’s blood out of his clothing.

Is Rove guilty? Oh, he’s guilty as all hell. But is he the person directly responsible for the criminal act of leaking an undercover CIA agent’s name to the press? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, we cannot assume his silence to be evidence of guilt. A man is innocent until proven guilty, if not in spirit, than in law. And never trust the devil; not even to lie.
KARL THE UNHOLY