P.T. BARNUM'S ADAGE MUST BE TRUE...
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Karl Rove's America
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 15, 2005
John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.
But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.
Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.
Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.
A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.
But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.
Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.
And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.
But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.
Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.
Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?
6 Comments:
Ultimately, Rove and his thugs have so much power because of gullible voters. It sucks that people are this corrupt and sleazy, but these sleaze tactics wouldn't work if voters thought things through. As long as people continue to be manipulated by a Big Lie that gets repeated often enough, or by phony hot-button issues, crooked politicians will continue to take advantage of them.
Rove keeps proving that Barnum was right. There really is a sucker born every minute.
I couldn't agree more with the column and the 2 comments.
My hope is that if the day ever comes (which is doubtful) that Rove gets locked up, he gets his comeuppance everyday in prison.
Yes, because we all know that the Democratic Party is all goodness and light. *pause* Now that I've finally caught my breath from that laughing fit, I'll continue. I find it somewhat odd that you speak of this as if it were a new phenomenon, or as if these tactics were limited to the Republican Party. The simple fact of the matter is that they're not. The only difference between the two major parties, as far as I can tell, are the groups to which they pander while they do the opposite and engage in all manner of hypocrisy. Are there good Democrats in Congress? Sure. Though I disagree with several of his beliefs, I do have some respect for Congressman Barney Frank, and were I in his district, I would probably vote for him, unless he had a really weak opponent in which case I would cast a protest vote. I've done that in my Congressional district in Alabama a few times, to do my part to remind even elected officials I like that their power is not absolute.
By that same token, there are also good Republicans in Congress, though those are equally rare. The really good ones of both parties are becoming steadily rarer as American politics become increasingly polarized. I agree with one thing OKDemocrat said: This isn't the America I grew up with either, and I'm only a couple of years older than him. The America I grew up with still remembered the debacles of the LBJ and Nixon administrations and was vigilant in keeping an eye on those they chose to lead them. However, his assertion that the Democratic Party is better than their opponents because they don't want to cause harm is patently false. By and large, the only thing they care about is furthering their own careers, again, a trait far from being limited to them as much as I desperately wish the truth were the opposite.
MC, thanks for contributing! I respect your independent-mindedness and thoughtful comments!
Most who are familiar with Paul Krugman's writings are well aware that he is definitely a left-winger, thus his article contains some strong bias in that direction. Being that I am also definitely a left-winger, the articles and comments I tend to post are strongly biased that way, whether they are my own writings or those of someone else.
While it may be true that the Democratic and Republican parties are both are rife with dishonest politicians, I feel it necessary to support the Democrats in large part because of what I believe is the undue influence by the "religious right" on the GOP. If it's a choice between a lefty and a Theocon, I'll provide a knee-jerk vote for the left just about every time. I have an intense distaste for the way in which the GOP has co-opted Christianity.
I don't disagree with most assertions that politics in general is a disgusting sort of thing... I know what I prefer, though, when it comes to political parties. Given that there are just a couple which I prefer the one that isn't interested in promoting a particular religion over others, that doesn't resort to crass media manipulation as much as its counterpart, and which doesn't base its foreign policy on a strategy of building a world empire.
Trust me, Snave. As bad as you think it is on the national level, come visit Alabama and Mississippi. Roy Moore has quickly become a major political force in Alabama. You may remember him as the "Ten Commandments Judge." I remember him as the guy I voted against 4 times (primary and general elections for him and his former aide) and cheered when he was ousted from office. Also, I was more than a bit annoyed when said aide defeated a far better jurist (a Democrat, I believe) for the place on the State Supreme Court.
Also, if you were from here, chances are you would probably have a far less rosy view of both major political parties, as members of both have landed in state and federal prisons in recent years, and others probably should have joined them. As much as you may believe the opposite, the crass media manipulation is quite rampant on both sides of the aisle. The only difference is that, right now, the Republicans are marginally more successful at it than the Democrats at the national level, though even that assertion is subject to considerable debate.
MC, trust me... I am glad I live in the USA, and especially glad I live in the Pacific NW!
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