Sunday Scan

Loser

Joy around the GOP political campfires is muted on the news that Ralph "Upchuck" Nader is in the race, because as I said a couple days back:

It would be nice if a Nader run would steal votes from the Demobama candidate and seal the deal for the GOP, but just put the sour, dour, fatalistic Nader up against the Man With Hope and you can see that a Nader campaign will be utterly without consequence.

The Dem responses to Nader's announcements were interesting, per AP: Obama lied and talked nice; Hillary didn't lie and told it as it was:

Obama, promoting his specious persona of the man who brings people together: "In many ways he is a heroic figure and I don't mean to diminish him."

Hillary, being transparently Clintonesque: "A passing fancy."

I run into Nader-like people all the time in my work; they are, basically, my consistent opponents. They fight change and progress, because they are utterly distrustful of corporations, and just as distrustful of government, which they see as sold out to the corporations.

Sounds like perfect model for a president from Hell, eh?

Imagine That!

60 Minutes is doing a Karl Rove expose tonight. Libs are giddy in anticipation: "This piece will undoubtedly be worth watching," says Glenn Greenwald. Here's the jist of the story:

A former Republican campaign worker claims that President Bush's former top political adviser, Karl Rove, asked her to find evidence that the Democratic governor of Alabama at the time was cheating on his wife, according to an upcoming broadcast of "60 Minutes." (AP)

Hold the presses! A political campaign operative looking for goods on a member of the other party! The only reason this story is being covered at all is because the subject is Karl Rove, and the BDS-sufferers in the media frequently show symptoms of Rove Derangement Syndrome as a side effect of BDS.

That said, stories like this are why I'm a public affairs guy who doesn't do political campaigns.

Most Ridiculous?

I've found a post I'm considering including in this year's competition for Most Ridiculous Post of the Year. It's from Chris Floyd Online, and it's called Empire and Burlesque: Permanent Bases Rise While Public Gawks at Geeks.

I complement the writer on a well-written piece, bringing us up to the cliff of his torrid anti-Americanism through a discussion of the remaining 2008 candidates as chicken-chomping carnival geeks ... but I fear him as a man so obsessed with America as evil that he can't recognize true evil when he sees it. In that, he reflects the thinking of the Left quite accurately, so it's a piece worth reading ... even if it sets your teeth on edge with passages like this:

It is also obvious – albeit far less openly acknowledged – that these policies are themselves a form of terrorism: state terrorism, on a massive scale, which has already killed at least a million people in Iraq alone.

Besides overstating Iraqi war fatalities by four-fold, Floyd manages to call us the terrorists of the world. Perhaps Floyd will join the geeks voting for Nader.

Military and Corporations? Puh-leeze!

With Nader and the rabid Left blog post noted above, there's been a bit of an anti-corporate theme today, tied at the ankle in a global three-legged race with the companion anti-military theme.

So a quote like this, from Thomas P.M. Barnett's weekly column, must drive Nader and Floyd nuts:

Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command, says the role of the military is largely to buy breathing space for better, nonmilitary solutions to emerge. That's something America needs to remember as we work the Middle East in this long war: The lasting solutions will arrive wearing business suits, not desert cammies.

Specifically, Barnett is talking about FDI in MENA, or Foreign Direct Investment in the Middle East/North Africa region. FDI is "sticky money," in that investments in business and infrastructure create long-term benefits of jobs and income -- which is particularly important in the MENA region, where idle hands can lead to terrorism. Look at Jordan as an example:

... I can't help but be struck by what a huge difference America's 2001 free-trade agreement with Jordan has made in that country's future.

Jordan is the size of Indiana, where I currently reside, and it possesses approximately the same population. The big difference is that Indiana is full of arable land, so agriculture is big here. In Jordan, only 3 percent of the land can be farmed, so 85 percent of Jordan's GDP originates in the service sector. If you're a small, resource-poor and service-heavy economy, the only way you can really grow is to super-connect with the global economy - the Israeli model.

This is where America's free-trade agreement, along with King Abdullah II's ongoing trade liberalization and economic reforms, has dramatically brightened Jordan's prospects. That agreement, along with a similar one concluded with the European Union in 2002, allows Jordan to serve as regional gateway to more than three-quarters of a billion consumers with disposable income.

Jordanian exports to America have skyrocketed since the treaty went into effect, increasingly 14-fold since 2000. The kingdom, which attracted $50 million of FDI annually in the late 1990s, pulled in roughly 36 times that amount last year.

Jordan still has 30 percent unemployment, but by Middle East standards, that's not all that bad, and it's moving in the right direction.

Wow. The U.S. military for temporary stability and corporate investments for long-term stability -- what a nightmare for the Lefties!

Speaking Of The Military/Industrial Complex ...

Right on cue, I came across a briefing out of Iraq that underscores the way the U.S. military buys time for home team to build up its security and economy. Speaking is Colonel Tom James, the commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division:

The brigade combat team also conducts numerous operations focused on extremists and criminals over the past two and a half months. In December we conducted Operation Marne Roundup, a successful combined operation to clear AQI in the Euphrates River Valley west of Iskandariyah, in the vicinity of the town of Khidr. During the operation and with assistance of SOIs, or Sons of Iraq, and local citizens, we killed approximately 18 extremists, captured 25, found and cleared 51 IEDs, and found and cleared 43 caches. We established Patrol Base Kelsey, named after a soldier that gave his life during this offensive operation.

Since we established the patrol base, 100 families have returned to their homes. We initiated numerous projects, to include rubble removal, school refurbishment and electricity repair, just to name a few. We also organized a local sheikh council to capture the needs of the people, as required.

Just south of Khidr is the town of Jurf al-Sakhr. Four months ago, it was a war zone dominated by extremists. It is now a secure community with positive governance and economic growth. An active police station and Sons of Iraq program secure the area, and over 40 businesses are growing, based on small-business education and microgrant stimulation.

This is a model community concept that will be adopted throughout our AO. Just the other day, I was at Jurf and witnessed a government-funded road crew paving a once war-ravaged street.

We continue relentless pursuit of the enemy and denying extremist sanctuaries throughout our AO. Over the past 83 days we conducted over 70 combined operations, both coalition and Iraqi security forces. We captured over 50 high-value enemy targets, cleared over 100 caches and cleared over 70 IEDs.

With the security window opened, we continue the exploitation phase, focused on governance and economics. We have an embedded reconstruction team resourced with governance and economics experts. Mr. Van Franken (sp), our EPRT leader, has a team, and as his team is an essential part of our brigade combat team, we include them in all operational planning and execution.

Under economics, they focus on developing small businesses, agricultural associations, poultry and fish farms and reconstruction projects. Under governance, they focus on local governance training, governance linkages and beladiya assistance, which are the public works and the essential services for the people.

Just another profile of the ruthless bloodsuckers who make up our military, eh?

Up against stories like this one, the rabid tirades against our military by the Left -- calling them fixated only on violence, and not smart enough for "real" work (like, oh, being a social worker on the government dole) -- just make me sick.

Pity The GM PR Guys

The GM PR department is going full-tilt on establishing GM's reputation as a green company -- not an easy task under the best of conditions -- so they must be reeling in light of this:

General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of s---," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.

Lutz, GM's outspoken product development chief, has been under fire from Internet bloggers since last month when he was quoted as making the remark to reporters in Texas.

In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those "spewing virtual vitriol" at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were "missing the big picture."

"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."

How about truth as a defense? Works for me.

Cat Haiku

I'm a dog guy, and this cat haiku just may explain why:

Humans are so strange.
Mine lies still in bed, then screams;
My claws are not that sharp.

Or this one:

The rule for today:
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.

For 13 more cat haiku, click here.

Fade-Out On The Campaign TV Spot

Karl Rove's "campaign lessons learned" piece in today's WSJ is good reading for any political wonk. Nothing much stands out as entirely new thought, but the four "new rules" and seven "old rules" he lists and illuminates are a primer for politicos.

One item did jump out from the rest, under the "new rule" topic that TV political ads ain't what they used to be:

By Feb. 5, when it costs $16 million to burn one television spot in every state that's voting, it's simply too expensive to be on air everywhere at once.

Breathtaking, isn't it?

I watch a bit more TV than I'd like to admit and I live within the huge LA TV market in a state that in five days will begin the process of doling out well over 100 GOP delegates -- and I have seen one presidential campaign ad. With the volume muted. It was for Hillary.

I was already numbed to it because of the Indian wars. We have four ballot propositions that would make four tribes vastly more wealthy, thousands of poor, gambling-addled citizens vastly poorer, and the state not much better off at all. The two sides have been skirmishing for well over a month; it seems like every day I see more Indians than Custer met at Little Big Horn.

Not all states are as initiative-crazed as California, but all states have local campaigns of one sort or another than are buying lots of TV spots for long before the primary bandwagons roll in. By the time the day comes when it costs $16 mil to buy a spot in every Feb. 5 primary state, the prez campaigns should know that the local politicos with their local campaigns will have already pretty much putrefied the waters, so the national spots will be little welcomed.

Rove's conclusion from this phenomenon is sound:

The 20th century's closing decades saw the rise of the TV ad man as the most potent operator in presidential campaigns. The 21st century's opening decade is seeing the rise of the communications director and press spokesman as the more important figures on a campaign staff. It is the age of the Internet, cable TV, YouTube, multiple news cycles in one day, and the need for really instantaneous response. Ads and ad makers are still vital -- but not nearly as much as they were just a few years ago.

That means that unless we bloggers can figure out a way to rake in money as effectively as TV stations do, campaigns should become less expensive to run. In Iowa, we saw Huckabee do well without a big ad budget and Romney not do well despite a huge ad budget.

This is good news for American politics, because as important as the TV spot was, and is, it's a lousy way to communicate with the public. The wealth of debates this year provided much more than the ads could, and the ensuing storm of commentary and YouTube clips created a depth of knowledge unprecedented in a campaign.

Granted, most Americans aren't watching political YouTube clips, listening 24/7 to talk radio or reading blog posts on the campaign -- but most Americans know someone who is. Unfortunately, they're doing this in a year when there's not a single great candidate on either side. But maybe in 2012 or 2016 we'll hit a sweet nexus of fantastic candidates and dazzling new ways to stay up on them.

This has been quite a campaign, flawed as the candidates may be, and the new media have helped us to see their flaws. But that sweet future campaign ... that will be one to shape America's future!

A Roving Rove's Legacy

Karl Rove, the former head of a public affairs firm, is 56 years old. I, the head of a public affairs firm, am 56 years old.

I am trying to imagine returning to my desk this morning -- not after a weekend with the family, but after the better part of a decade campaigning for, then running policy for, the president of the United States.

Should Karl Rove sit down at his old desk and take up with his old clients, he would certainly feel blessed relief. No matter how urgent, significant and life-and-death their problems seem to them to be, they would be dandelion fluff compared to what he has been dealing with.

And no matter how he decides to manage a particular issue, the chances are pretty slim that he'd ever again be hung or burned in effigy, or investigated by a federal prosecutor, or vilified by the Dem leadership on the evening news.

But I doubt if Rove will be able to focus on such projects again because they would seem rather irrelevant and simplistic after what he's been through. And I don't think any of the 2008 presidential campaigns will come calling, except perhaps for Hillary. She is, in Rove's words, just "tough, tenacious, fatally flawed" enough to do such a thing.

So, I imagine, Rove's days will be filled with deciding which book deal to sign and juggling his calendar for big-ticket speaking engagements. The networks will come calling, asking him to be one of their political commentators, and who knows, maybe he'll start a blog.

Whatever it is, it won't be managing the president. And that, I think, is not a bad thing. Rove is obviously brilliant and dedicated ... but let's count the domestic policy successes he can tuck away in his resume.

There was the 2004 re-election. No, that's not a policy success.

No Child Left Behind. That was pretty good.

Two Supreme Court justices. Excellent, excellent. But far too many federal court judge nominations are still going nowhere.

Avoiding, thus far, the wholesale selling out of the US to join the Warmie crazies.

Getting and tenaciously holding on to the tax cuts.

And now I'm beginning to grasp at air.

Rove, for all the hatred he attracted from the Left, really didn't do that much because this was necessarily a foreign policy presidency. On the domestic front, runaway spending and failure to deal toughly with the border will be a big part of Rove's legacy.

But he can be satisfied nonetheless, knowing that anyone who can make the crazy, paranoid, hateful crazies of the Left as apoplectic as he did must have been doing something right.

Unfortunately, Rove is not destined to just leave the White House so my musings have been a bit of fantasy. The Dems have investigations brewing and now that he's not shielded by the president's executive privilege anymore, I imagine that the "family time" he's supposedly pursuing is going to be replaced with a lot of "lawyer time."

What other choice do the Dems have? They know that Rove helped solidify their base even more than he solidified the GOP base. They can't' afford to let him ride off into the sunset.

Somebody Slap Rove Upside The Head

I'm sure you've read the stories by now of the confrontation one of my least favorite human beings, Laurie David (right) and another who at least can sing, Sheryl Crow, had with Karl Rove at the White House Correspondents dinner.

If you somehow missed it, here's how David and Crow explained the spat the next day in HuffPost:

We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country.

We felt compelled to remind him that the research is done and the results are in (www.IPCC.ch). Mr. Rove exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, Mr. Rove launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding China not doing enough thus neither should we. (Since when do we follow China's lead?) ...

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unphased, Sheryl abruptly responded, "You can't speak to us like that, you work for us." Karl then quipped, "I don't work for you, I work for the American people." To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, "We are the American people."

The two had just finished a bio-diesel of college campuses, where they filled the naive heads of collegiates and profs with Warmie hysteria, which readily translates to anti-Bush, anti-business, anti-free market rhetoric. This was a big, big deal in the Warmie iconosphere; so big, in fact, that WaPo was kind enough to give us a day-by-day diary.

I'm sure the David-Crow report trumped up the nastiness Rove and played down the bitchiness of the girls. I've heard, also, that David's husband Larry was making a first class fool of himself at the dinner, playing the strident lefty.

Be that as it may, anyone in the public eye knows to not let whackos get under your skin. You smile, you say that's nice, you maybe even make a counterpoint, but the last thing you want to make is news.

Rove needs to be slapped upside the head. "What were you thinking, Karl!?"

Now he's fed the image of the Bushies as being crazy hostile, ultra defensive and totally in the dark about climate change and its possible implications. Whatever he actually said, just his demeanor give them the opportunity to score Warmie points, build the mystique and make fools of those who think differently about human causality and the relative importance or scientific feasibility of "stopping" global warming.

When I train spokespersons, I teach seven rules, and not letting them get to you is high on the list. I've been in very hostile situations with angry folks on the opposite side of my clients, and you'd never know it (unless there was steam escaping out of my ears).

Rove has been through this kind of training in spades. He knows better, and he's done better on many occasions more intense than this. The fact that he would crack -- and do it with the two high priestesses of global warming -- indicates that tempers are short and nerves are frayed among senior Bush staffers.

Some vacations and some resignations are in order before more boilers on the ship of state blow. Mixing metaphores, there's going to be heat in the kitchen for another year and a half, so either put on the asbestos long underwear or get thee to temper rehab.

Bummer For NYT: They Miss Rove Again

"Can we get Karl Rove? Can we really get him?"

You can just hear the urgency, the fervid anticipation in the voices around the editorial board room of the NYTimes. They missed him with the Plame Game, but maybe now, with AG AG and the federal prosecutors ...

So, with sweaty palms and furtive eyes, they launched today's salvo: "E-Mail Shows Rove's Role in Fate of Prosecutors."

Except the emails don't do anything of the sort.

Refresher course: When President Bush took office, something he accomplished with Karl Rove's help, he set three goals for anyone who wanted to serve as a U.S. attorney: Prosecute voter fraud, prosecute immigration offenses, particularly by business, and pursue federal death penalty cases. Anyone who accepted a position as a U.S. Attorney knew what was expected of them.

Presumably, someone in DC would be tasked with monitoring how those goals are being achieved, both in the consideration of fed prosecutors and evaluation of their performance. And guess what? It was so, says the NYT:

Almost every Wednesday afternoon, advisers to President Bush gather to strategize about putting his stamp on the federal courts and the United States attorney's offices.

The group meets in the Roosevelt Room and includes aides to the White House counsel, the chief of staff, the attorney general and Karl Rove, who also sometimes attends himself. Each of them signs off on every nomination.

Mr. Rove, a top adviser to the president, takes charge of the politics. As caretaker to the administration’s conservative allies, Mr. Rove relays their concerns, according to several participants in the Wednesday meetings. And especially for appointments of United States attorneys, he manages the horse trading.

The article then goes on to describe some of the horse trading. Perhaps a Senator who Bush had to burn a bit has a candidate for U.S. Attorney. Rove would then say, "If the candidate checks out, let's throw the Senator a bone." Or, as the article goes into in great detail regarding the Illinois investigation of former Republican governor, Rove enforced the political rule that U.S. Attorneys should be from the states in which they'll serve.

As the president's chief political advisor, that's exactly Rove's role: playing politics, rewarding allies, isolating opponents. You may want to check this out for yourself, but rumor has it such political play also was at work by Harold Ickes in Clinton's White House, and by senior political aides of Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, Truman and FDR. So it is and was and will be.

Yet to the NYT, it's Rove, so it's different. There's just one problem with their analysis. They know they've got nothing on Rove in this messy heap of "journalism," yet they labored hard to bury that fact. But in the end, all they can say is that Rove was involved in the hiring of federal prosecutors; nothing in the story mentions his meddling in their firing -- not that such meddling would be wrong in any way, since U.S. attorneys serve at the president's will.

The story mentions problems with investigations of political corruption in Washington and New Mexico, and tries to make Rove the man behind the curtain that we're not supposed to pay attention to:

In the months before the United States attorneys in New Mexico and Washington State were ousted, Mr. Rove joined a chorus of complaints from state Republicans that the federal prosecutors had failed to press charges in Democratic voter fraud cases. While planning a June 21, 2006, White House session to discuss the prosecutors, for example, a Rove deputy arranged for top Justice Department officials to meet with an important Bush supporter who was critical of New Mexico’s federal prosecutor about voter fraud.

Wait. There was a "chorus of complaints?" It wasn't just Rove? You mean, perhaps a lot of people were aware that something was going wrong in the federal atty offices of New Mex and Washington, where directive #1, prosecution of voter fraud, was just not happening the way it should?

And Rove's reaction to this chorus? Was it something particularly devious? Was it "Off with their heads?" No, he worked to placate an important contributor, which is what he is supposed to do. Protect the base, protect the fundraising, represent the president well.

Of course, sometimes Rove's role was to push a new candidate that could help achieve the President's objectives and score some political points in the process. Securing a position for such a person would require the removal of the attorney currently serving, so this is the door the NYT wants to drive a big truck through: Karl Rove axed so-and-so so a Bush Buddy could get the job. Again, they fail to come up with anything; this is as close as they got:

In Arkansas, Representative John Boozman, the state’s highest ranking Republican in Congress, said he recommended Mr. Rove’s protégé, Mr. Griffin, for a United States attorney vacancy in 2004, in part because of his ties to Mr. Rove.

A prosecutor in the Army Reserves, Mr. Griffin worked for Mr. Rove as an opposition researcher attacking Democratic presidential candidates in 2000. In between, for six months, the Justice Department had dispatched him to Arkansas to get experience as a prosecutor.

“I have been in situations through the years where Tim and Karl were at,” Mr. Boozman recalled. “I could tell that Karl thought highly of him.” -

Mr. Griffin dropped out of the running in 2004 when he accepted a campaign job for Mr. Rove, then became his deputy in the White House. But last summer, the department asked United States Attorney H. E. Cummins III to resign to make room and Mr. Rove’s staff began talking with department officials about how to install Mr. Griffin despite Senate opposition, internal e-mail shows.

No Rovian fingerprints are announced; a routine dismissal through routine channels followed by designing a confirmation campaign is the best the journalistic stars at the NYT can come up with -- and if they bothered to look at Dem administrations half as scrupulously as they pore over every Bush/Rove move, they would find this is BAU -- business as usual -- in politics.

Bottom line: Having nothing didn't keep the NYT from slapping a headline and a photo on this mess and waving it before the world so those who don't take the time to read the two-clicker will come away with the impression that Rove fired federal attorneys.

It was just another big "expose" that exposes nothing more than the MSM's relentless pursuit of their prey. This time, the fox again outran the hounds.

Hat-tip: memeorandum