Following up on an earlier item, when Newsweek announced it was bringing on Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas as a contributor for the 2008 presidential campaign, the magazine vowed to add a conservative to “balance” out the prominent progressive netroots leader.
There’s been quite a bit of scuttlebutt the past couple of days over who would get the gig on the right, and this afternoon, we found out.
Less than three months after leaving the Bush White House, Karl Rove is becoming a member of a community not all that popular with administration officials: the media.
Newsweek has signed the president’s former deputy chief of staff as a commentator who will turn out several columns on the 2008 campaign through inauguration day. The move is not likely to prove popular among liberals who believe the mainstream media have been too soft on the Bush administration.
“We want to give readers a feel for what it’s like to be on the inside,” says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham. “Our readers are sophisticated enough to know that what they get from Karl has to be judged in the context of who Karl is…Readers will have to decide if he’s simply an apologist.”
I don’t think this is an unreasonable move on Newsweek’s part. I’d like to think the magazine could find a prominent political conservative analyst who wasn’t nearly brought up on criminal charges for his role in outing an undercover CIA agent during a war and then lying about it, but I realize it today’s GOP, it’s slim pickings.
That said, Rove’s hire raises a few pertinent questions.
* Will Rove stop whining about how the media won’t give him a fair shake? Now he’s part of the MSM.
* Will guys like Juan Williams, who complained that Markos isn’t a legitimate journalist, and therefore shouldn’t be offering analysis at Newsweek, be equally critical of the magazine for hiring Rove?
* On a related note, what will Bill O’Reilly say?
* Right-wing blogs have been in widespread agreement over the last few days that they should turn Newsweek down if offered the gig. First, did they really think they were in the running? And second, will any of them condemn Rove?
In the big picture, I think this is actually a good move for the online community in general. Just last week, Rove was publicly bashing “nutty” bloggers, who he sees as undermining democracy.
“People in the past who have been on the nutty fringe of political life, who were more or less voiceless, have now been given an inexpensive and easily accessible soapbox, a blog,” Mr. Rove said…. “I’m a fan of many blogs. I visit them frequently and I learn a lot from them. But there also blogs written by angry kooks.”
Mr. Rove cited the results of a study that found that writers and commenters on liberal blogs such as DailyKos.com cursed far more than writers and commenters on conservative Web sites such as FreeRepublic.com.
“My point is not that liberals swear publicly more often than conservatives. That may be true, but that’s not my point,” Mr. Rove said. “It is that the netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion.”
Now, he’s the counterweight to Daily Kos’ founder.
It’s interesting, in a way, to see Rove’s career trajectory. He was the Boy Genius, the Architect, and Bush’s Brain, responsible for reinventing the modern presidential campaign. Now, he’s the counterbalance for a blogger he doesn’t like. Hmm.