KARL ROVE'S FILTHY MIND
How "Bush's Brain" hijacked
Washington DC and politics-as-usual

From Bush Wars courtesy of This Modern World:

It’s said one quality that sets Rove apart is his ability to see the whole playing field in politics. So let’s talk about the playing field that Rove seems to see.

Start with the people: They are tired, overworked, and scared--about their own livelihoods and threats from without. More important, they are woefully ignorant, and easily worn down, concerning the details of any political subject. They are acclimated to political races in which the main differences revolve around personality, and comfortable making almost entirely emotional decisions about candidates. This is an overgeneralization, but to date a viable one. Presidential elections are mass-culture phenomena, and the majority of voters in any election know very little of substance about the candidates or issues involved.

The media: On a mass basis, the medium that matters most by far is television. According to a 2003 Pew Research Center study, over 80 percent of Americans claim to get most of their news from TV. And if you take the further step of looking at TV news viewership numbers, you will find them pretty underwhelming. The only sensible conclusion is that a great many Americans consume political news in sporadic, sidelong fashion if at all. Many others try to follow events, but lack the time for anything but a few minutes of cable news and glance at their newspaper’s front page.

Two things follow. First, the relative impact of political ads versus news coverage is much greater than a casual observer might think. Second, and more important, if you can keep bad news off the front page and off TV news, most people will never even know it happened. There are only a handful of media organizations in charge of what Americans see on the national TV news, and they are always looking over their shoulders at each other. They’re not just pack animals; they’re an exceptionally small and manageable pack. Give them interesting things to take pictures of, toss them an emotionally charged sideshow like gay marriage occasionally, and they will show the public whatever you want them to see.

The political opposition: Please. They were pathetic to start with, and September 11 paralyzed them completely. The Democrats have been chasing Republicans’ fumes since Reagan. For the past generation they have not disagreed with the GOP in principle on any of the important points of empire, capital’s prerogatives, or economic austerity at home; they just fuss more and go slower. To them, elections have been battles over market share more than the direction of things. In the process, the Democratic party has gone soft. It’s politically unserious, no longer capable of putting up a sustained fight. This is nothing new. Republicans got away with Iran/contra in the ‘80s, and Bill Clinton was nearly booted from office for illicit blowjobs. George Bush I got little flack for pardoning Iran/contra conspirators on his way out of office; Bill Clinton let a sleazy financier named Marc Rich off the hook, and Republicans kept the issue in play for weeks.

Let's face it, Karl Rove isn't some two-bit Rasputin: he's the little devil sitting on our President's shoulder, whispering evil in his ear. And Rove's a pretty damned brilliant devil, at that. The Democrats have no close analogue in this area. That's one of the main reasons that he's so dangerous; liberals still seem to not have any idea what's going on, continuing to bring knives to the proverbial gun fight even though Rove is armed for bear. Or donkey as the case may be.

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