Karl Rove hit the morning shows yesterday, reflecting a bit on his White House tenure as it comes to an end. Most of the attention was focused on his latest Plame-related lies, which were certainly interesting, but I found a different exchange just as interesting.
Fox News’ Chris Wallace noted the 2002 smear of Max Cleland, a top White House target. Wallace asked whether Rove believed counter-terrorism should have been used to divide the country, as in the Georgia race. Rove passed on responsibility.
“[The NRSC] did that ad. The White House didn’t. It would be — surprise you, but we’ve got better things to do than write television ads in Senate campaigns in Georgia.
“I do think it’s important to look at the context of this. Senator Cleland was running a television ad saying that he supported the president on homeland security, when he was one of the senators who was blocking the passage of the homeland security bill because of a special interest provision that would have allowed the labor unions to organize the Department of Homeland Security.”
First, Rove is being modest about his role. Digby reminded me of a few items that note that Rove personally intervened in the Georgia race in order to help beat Cleland, and it was a Rove protege who crafted an ad of Cleland alongside Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. I don’t think Rove had “better things to do” at all; this is what he had to do.
Second, there’s probably no value in re-litigating the Georgia race, but to hear Rove tell it yesterday, war heroes can legitimately be labeled traitors if they believe federal employees should have the right to join a union. Five years later, Rove still believes it.
For all the talk about our toxic political discourse, it amazes me that the political establishment has forgotten that current conditions are the outgrowth of an intentional strategy. It’s not complicated — Karl Rove poisoned politics on purpose. Rove may shrug his shoulders now and ask, “Who, me?” but his record speaks for itself.
And then, of course, there are the Rove lies about the Plame scandal. He told Wallace, “What I did say to one reporter was, ‘I’ve heard that, too.’ And what I said to another reporter, off the record, was, in essence, I don’t think you ought to be writing about this.” On Meet the Press, Matt Cooper, who received the Plame leak from Rove while working at Time magazine, called Rove out.
“I think he was dissembling to put it charitably. To imply that he didn’t know about [Plame’s identity], or that he heard it in some rumor out in the hallways, is nonsense.”
Rove? Lying about outing an undercover CIA agent? You don’t say.
And as long as we’re on the subject, Rove decided to go literary in describing his self-pity.
“Let’s face it, I mean, I’m a myth,” Mr. Rove told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” when asked about his critics. “You know, I’m Beowulf, you know, I’m Grendel. I don’t know who I am. But they’re after me.”
I suspect Rove was trying to appear erudite, but as Brian Beutler noted, Rove got the comparison wrong: “My diagnosis — no doubt tinctured by the fact that I think Karl Rove is a bad, bad man — is that Rove is a dilettante who often tries to impress people with literary references that don’t necessarily make sense. Beowulf and Grendel, after all, battled each other.”
This underscores the problem that came up during Rove’s media blitz yesterday: we were watching a surprisingly unimpressive individual. Rove isn’t a genius; he’s a bumbling attack dog with sharp teeth. Indeed, he’s strikingly similar to the man he helped elect — both Bush and Rove are filled with unearned self-confidence that masks embarrassing ignorance.
Watching him stumble through interviews, I almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.