Karl Rove Aims to Stop McCain / Lieberman Ticket

According to Politico's scoop, Rove quietly phoned Senator Joe Lieberman to ask him to "withdraw his name from vice presidential consideration." Lieberman declined Rove's suggestion, as you might expect. Should Lieberman be McCain's pick, however, you can expect the GOP to suffer unspeakable fits of outrage over Lieberman's stance on social issues (e.g., abortion).

A McCain--Lieberman ticket ain't gonna happen; even so, it speaks to Rove's hubris that he'd actually get on the phone and ask Lieberman to take himself out of the running.

Sullivan asks, "Would Clinton Prefer McCain to Obama?"

Andrew Sullivan, one of the country’s more compassionate, earnest commentators, has issued a blistering critique of the new ad produced by HRC’s camp to score some Pennsylvania points on the "Obama-elitist" thing. Sullivan writes of the commercial:

This ad has managed to actually shock me. Yes, me, rabid Clinton-hater, second only to Hitchens in Clinton Derangement Syndrome, proud holder of the view that Senator Clinton is one of the ghastliest examples of pure political cynicism and opportunism in public life, an empty, reverberating shell of a human being, a case study in how power and the search for it do indeed in the end corrupt absolutely [. . . .] This is far too crude even for Karl Rove. It is a parody of a brutal Rove ad. Without batting an eyelid, Clinton effortlessly adopts the entire worldview of the most cynical of Republican operatives and applies it with the delicacy of a shovel to the likely Democratic party nominee. This is a) how desperate she must know feel; b) how utterly irrelevant it is to her what happens in this election unless she is the next Democratic nominee for president.

Okay, so maybe Sullivan's compassion fails to extend to the Clintons. Even so, I think he’s nailed it dead on here.

Sadly, whereas I used to view Hillary as a strong, positive woman with deeply-held convictions about the social good, I now see her as corrosive--due, largely, to her napalm-scented campaigning technique. Where I used to see a woman of character, I now see a woman who, in adapting and applying the smear techniques that the VRWC used against her, her husband and her party, has aligned herself with the ugliest of politicos—the Karl Roves, the Lee Atwaters—in her quest for the presidency.

Is this sexist? No. I the same rules apply to any hardened, cynical, and hyper-partisan politician in the U. S.—and the woman, is partisan. If we elect her, we can anticipate four-to- eight more years of disastrously deadlocked government.

A Matter of Character ?

I found a saddening, telling little anecdote about President G W Bush and Karl Rove at The Plank, a 'blog at The New Republic. The tale appears originally in an article titled "The Rove Presidency," by Joshua Green, in September 2007's Atlantic Monthly (subscription only). In the article, Dick Armey, the House Majority Leader when Bush first took office, relates the following:

For all the years he was president," Armey told me, "Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we'd do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn't like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president's autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it." Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. "Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, 'It would probably wind up on eBay,'" Armey continued.

So, what do you come away with after reading this? That GWB and KR seem petty, dismissive, and suspicious? Then again, the five seconds it takes to sign a nametag is a mighty waste of valuable commander time, and, anyway, the only reason a kid would appreciate a president's autograph would lay in its profit potential. So cynical.