DETROIT -- Rove is gone. Rice is staying. The beltway blabber classes hail both announcements. Somehow, Karl Rove -- President George W. Bush's political guru, the man who created the monster -- gets most of the blame for the lasting horror show this failed presidency has brought the world.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice still enjoys media adulation and the broad public support her worshipers create for her. She's perceived as a glimmer of decency, resolve and earnest competence in this otherwise thoroughly discredited administration.
Rove -- after sparking the beast to life and making him politically viable -- became Bush's long-term planner, the architect of the lies, deceptions and monumental fraud used to mold Bush as a "regular guy," devoted to the interests of working Americans, protecting the nation and bringing peace and democracy to the world.
Rove is pure cynicism, an amoral hollow man willing to say and do anything to win, comfortable in the bare, dry cellar of political depravity, where rats and other vermin thrive. (Thanks, T.S. Eliot). But Rice's dainty, expensively shod feet never tread on such broken glass. So goes the myth.
Rove's quest for a single-party nation is rooted in his radical notion of a permanent political realignment and transformation of American politics. Rev. Rove and his drugged disciple Rush Limbaugh wanted the GOP to join hands with the rapture wing of the far right, melding them into a crusade to drive liberals into the sea.
Salon's Sidney Blumenthal describes Rove's blurring of traditional political-governmental separations, a concept Bush cared nothing about: "Rove's merger of politics and policy was an effort to forge a total one-party state. While he is acclaimed as a political strategist, his true innovation was in governing. He sought to subordinate the entire federal government to his goal of creating a permanent Republican majority. Every department and agency has been subject to intense and through politicization."
The evidence of Rove's "anvil of politics on professional career staff," as Blumenthal describes it, is evident in everything from the sacking of U.S. Attorneys, to the subordination of science to the beliefs of religious fundamentalists, to the political indoctrination sessions Rove held for U.S. ambassadors and foreign service officers.
Rove's exit was revealed in a shamelessly fawning interview with Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor Paul Gigot. They sat in Rove's "book-lined living room" as Bush's "brain" told the stenographer he was leaving to spend more time with his family.
Rove wants to stay far away from subpoenas about the Justice Department purge he initiated. Rove will always be remembered as a manipulative master of dirty tricks, certainly never a statesman.
But Frankenstein's bride, Condi Rice, whose presidential nickname is "guru," remains unscathed and faces little scrutiny for her role in soothing and sucking up to the beast, shaping his ignorant instincts into the neoconservative world view.
The real question for historians should be: Who did more damage to the world -- Rice or Rove? Why is Rice always called "accomplished"? Why is Rove always the great debaser of our national political life, while Rice gets a free pass? Rice wants a legacy of sterling achievement. She longs to be remembered as a skilled and dedicated diplomat, a first-class leader on the world stage, an image of grace and accomplishment for our young to emulate.
In fact, Rice is a fraud. She's a political hack who helped design the worst national security and foreign policy failures in U.S. history. Her devotion to Bush -- an infatuation, really -- ruined whatever modest recognition she has achieved. Rice has done more lasting damage to our nation and the world than has Rove.
Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack assured us Condi will remain, even as Karl fades into the Texas sunset: "The basic question is: Is she planning on sticking around? The answer to the question is yes."
That's an affirmative for more violence and suffering in Iraq and a new round of carnage in Iran. Rice has shown neither initiative nor creativity in seeking solutions to the mess in the Middle East she helped inspire. She supports the unilateralism, global bullying and arrogance that have brought us the disaster in Iraq and lasting enmity toward the United States around the world.
Her latest move to quell hostility toward our nation is the appointment of newly enshrined Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripkin Jr. as a roving sports ambassador of good will. Cal certainly will do his determined best, but our problems go far beyond handshakes and autographs from a sports star. Besides, in the Middle East, they play soccer, not baseball.
Rice has spent considerably more time this summer working on her golf game -- her latest addictive striving for accomplishment -- than she has in face-to-face meetings with the warring factions in Iraq or with political leaders in Palestine and Israel. That requires a vision for the future and unglamorous hard work. Rice is simply not up to that.
In a recent puff piece on Rice in "Business Week" magazine, Maria Bartiromo declared, "Her resolve has never wavered and her poise has never been pierced." Pure crap. The world is a mess, and the accomplished Dr. Rice helped her monster achieve that ignominious feat.
Bartiromo asked the secretary of state whether she would consider a career in business or on Wall Street when her political days fade.
"I don't know what I'll do," Rice modestly replied. "I'm a terrible long-term planner." Perverted and failed as he was, the loathsome Karl Rove had a long-term plan.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 21 2007 |