Make 'Em Deny It
I have to admit that I have had a hard time believing the reports in the New York Times and Washington Post this week that the administration has placed Karl Rove at the steering wheel of the vast Gulf Coast Reconstruction project Bush formally announced last night.
On some level, obviously, Rove is always in charge of everything important this administration does. But the idea that he would actually push aside the veil and take operational command of the largest domestic spending initiative in many decades is really breathtaking.
After all, Karl Rove is (a) the man most responsible for the entire strategy of partisan and ideological polarization that has poisoned the atmosphere of American politics, and (b) a consistent practitioner of a form of politics that relentlessly focuses on the conjunction of money, ideology, and (in his mind, at least) purchasable voter blocs, and (c) the potential object of a federal indictment for violating national security policies, and his own security clearance, by "outing" an undercover CIA agent to punish her politically inconvenient husband.
It's an open statement that more than 200 billion dollars in taxpayers' money--financed by still more borrowing from hostile foreign governments--will be put to the task of repairing George W. Bush's political condition and paving the way for a GOP succession in 2008.
Can anyone imagine what would have happened if Bill Clinton had put James Carville or Harold Ickes or (horror of horrors) Dick Morris in charge of a giant disaster recovery project in the 1990s?
The whole thing reminds me of the old and probably apochryphal story (which I will bowdlerize, since this is a Family Blog) about LBJ's first congressional race, when he supposedly told his campaign manager to begin circulating the rumor that his main opponent, a pig farmer, was practicing animal husbandry a bit too literally.
"Jesus, Lyndon," the campaign manager was said to have responded. "Nobody's going to believe that."
"Yeah," quoth LBJ, "but I want to hear the SOB deny it."
In this case, the unnatural act of Rove's husbandry of Gulf Reconstruction funds is not a barnyard rumor, but best we can tell, a fact.
As is often the case with Rove, the strategy is to do something so audacious that the opposition is left too astonished to respond until it is reduced to impotent and hysterical-sounding spluttering.
Let's all agree that our goal is to make 'em deny it, before it's too late.
Bush has never ruled without his training wheels. No time to remove them when you're coasting down hill.
September 16, 2005 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ed -- I have to hope that Rove functions as placeholder until they decide who they want. Again it is just a hope but key Senators, Governors and corporate types should want and be willing to speak up for someone of the caliber to actually run things.
Would not surprise me if Cheney's first job is find this reconstruction leader. Bush has to trust this person since his second term will ride on this person.
September 16, 2005 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did you to appoint Colin Powell?
September 16, 2005 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
September 16, 2005 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes,I agree with you. So how do we get Dean, Pelosi, Reid to act on it? Or do we get MoveOn to make an ad linking Karl Rove to the hurricane aid?
It is clear also that this has the hallmarks of a made-for-Rove wedge issue written all over it, as with the realization that dhS was what Bush should do, provided civil service protections were abandoned from it. Deny DHS funding in the vote and be branded as someone who won't protect the US because you favor the unions. Deny Katrina support and be branded as someone who doesn't really care about the gulf states. It is all bs, but we need a short and sweet comeback on that.
Rove should be well enough known and despised that an effective campaign along these lines is possible. How do we get it off the ground, and how do we answer the simple contention that being against aid in this form is not being against aid?
September 16, 2005 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did you expect him to appoint Colin Powell? Sorry for gramatical & syntax errors in previous comment.
September 16, 2005 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
i am convinced rove is in league with the dark force... no one comes close to the ugliness he has been able to foster in american politics and he has been doing it for 30+ years... he is, in my mind, the most loathsome of the lot and it's testament to just exactly how terrified bush is of his plummeting poll numbers that he would give the katrina reconstruction project over to his campaign manager... pathetic...
September 16, 2005 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's just possible that they haven't got anyone else. Not from the inner circle that they trust, because this job has the capability to release damaging material against the White House for months to come. Not now that Powell and Gingrich are circling for attack, and not now that everyone is looking at 2008. The person with the reconstruction budget to spend is going to be in an enviable position for buying that race.
September 16, 2005 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't expect it or even think it but, if I were a president who had just screwed up so royally, I'd have done something like it. Heck, I'd have had that quasi-celebrity National Guard general Honore do it. If I were president and a mercenary out for nothing but the interests of myself and my friends, I'd have certainly done something like that. It's almost basic. In fact, Rove is such a rotten appointment for this (he's a politico with no experience at disaster relief or urban planning) that I'm kind of shocked that Rove himself even let this happen. Ordinarily, Rove would no better and say, "Not me, it just looks bad." But they're all so drunk with power and a sense of invincibility that reason has gone out the window.
September 16, 2005 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
An echo of Hitler putting Himmler in charge of Berlin's defense?
September 16, 2005 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I kind of did expect him to appoint Colin Powell. But, I am kind of stupidly naive and keep expecting politicians to act in the best interests of someone other than themselves.
Funny enough, my boss (a staunch conservative who watches This Week just for George Will every Sunday) and I had a conversation today that went like this:
Boss: I think Bush should appoint Colin Powell to head the reconstruction. He isn't divisive like that Karl Rove guy that all you bleeding heart liberals despise.
Me: No, he appointed Karl Rove to do it. Karl Rove, who is known for being the President's brain and for disclosing the name of a covert CIA operative.
Boss: You are crazy.
Me: No, the Washington Post and the NY Times both reported it.
Boss (joking, sort of): Well, you know you can't trust the newspapers. Did you see what Unnamed Local Paper said about us this week? I guess you have to admire Bush's loyalty. Anyone else would've fired that guy by now, but he is sticking with him clearly.
September 16, 2005 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's possible (just barely possible) that there's a somewhat less cynical reason for Bush to put Rove in charge of the reconstruction effort. I think that Bush looks upon Rove as the archetype of The Competent Man, a person who can cut through the bullshit and Get the Job Down, and that he has put Rove in charge in the hope that he'll manage to avoid the incompetency and screwing up at top levels that has marked the effort to this moment. In this way he'll be extracated from the morass he finds himself in.
(Note that even if this is true, it doesn't negate the probability that Rove sees the assignment solely in patronage and pork terms, and not as a chance to do a good job and help out a devastated region.)
Of course, Rove may well be (and probably is) very, very competent in his area of expertise, but the ability to get idiots elected and pull the wool over the eyes of millions of fools isn't exactly the kind of experience that the head of such a complex and massive effort needs, but Bush's thinking doesn't run in such empirical reality-based tracks as that. To him, it may be as simple as See Rove Can Get a Job Done, This Job Needs to Get Done, Use Rove for This Job -- the stripped-down logic of the intellectually unsophisticated.
September 16, 2005 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Part of the reason could also be Rove's potential liability in the Plame case. If Rove is Reconstruction Czar, the media may be sufficiently distracted to drop Plamegate; there has not been a peep of Rove's outing of an undercover CIA agent since the Katrina disaster. Might Fitzgerald be less inclined to indict Rove if he is the Reconstruction Czar?
September 17, 2005 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right now, the reconstruction funds are routed through Homeland Security to FEMA. In the House, the Homeland Security Appropriations Committee is key to whatever budgeting is being done with this money -- and the Ranking Member on that committee is Martin Olav Sabo, 14th termer from Minneapolis and a bit of the burbs. He won his last election by about 74% -- highest Democratic margin in the House.
Martin was on Minnesota Public Radio this week talking about this, making clear that even Republicans on the committee had quams about the way money and contracts were beeing wildly passed out. I would suggest he would be a key contact in building a major demand for a PLAN -- and a budget attatched to that plan, that might reflect a strategy for first the relief process, and then rebuilding. He said he thought this weekend, or sometime next week a single leader -- or a leadership team might emerge from the White House.
I think Martin should get all the complaints about the suspension of Davis-Bacon. He is very strong pro-labor, and would know how to use them. Similarly, when people find out about probable fraud -- send the details to Martin's office.
I really don't want to overburden my Congressman, but he is in a critical leadership position on the Democratic Side, and he is fully capable of getting to the heart of things. You may remember him as the Chair of the Budget Committee during Clinton's first term.
September 17, 2005 2:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
"As we have said, this is part of an on-going investigation. The prosecutor has asked us not to comment, and the President will not comment at this time. Let's let all the facts come out first. At the appropriate time the President will make a statement. In the meantime, yes, Mr. Rove has the President's full confidence."
;o)
September 17, 2005 5:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
My prediction after the NO fiasco was that the GOP would try to ditch Bush before he dragged down the party with him. The Fitzgerald investigation was the perfect vehicle for accomplishing this "ditching." Since Bush is Rove's creation, we would be set for an epic fight between Rove and the Gray Men of the GOP.
So I interpret this appointment of Rove as a signal to the GOP to come to heel by the Rovian forces....
I guess I'm having a hard time understanding how any fiscal conservatives in the GOP are able to look at themselves in the mirror. Are any of them looking particularly unshaven or uncombed these days?
September 17, 2005 6:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it possible that one of the motivations for appointing Rove is that it provides a perfect excuse for a presidential pardon should Rove be indicted?
September 17, 2005 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Rove appointment reminds me of a question asked about Bush regarding Iraq. How could he not pull all the resources necessary into Iraq to make sure it was a success? Isn't one of the problems with Bush is that he seems so out of touch with his administration and our nation. Thus Rove, not say Jack Welch or other business leader with experience at leading a huge enterprise, because Bush knows about the politics of issues but not the issues themselves.
September 17, 2005 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is probably the right answer, assuming the rumors are true. That is, it's the only way that this makes sense to me - the only way Rove would appoint Rove to this job, I guess. I figure they think that, if they have Rove serving the nation rather than the party for a change, it might make it politically more difficult to indict him (strikes me as unlikely to be true), and politically more easy for Bush to keep him on staff after he is indicted (probably true, if only because Bush only has to convince Bush on this point, or to convince himself that he can convince others with: 'Karl has an important job to do, and it would hurt the poor refugees to let him go now').
September 17, 2005 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what happens if Rove is indicted? Didn't Bush just up the ante? Does this means he knows Fitz won't indict Rove? Is this just to distract everybody? How strange. Didnt Bush just take a rash of shit for appointing a hack to head FEMA? What is Rove, if not the ultimate political hack? This is Twilight Zone stuff.
September 17, 2005 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Democrats have to start compunding the failures on Katrina. Don't mention one without mentioning the other ten in one breath: Bush appointing unqualified people to top levels of government by cronyism; Bush putting Rove in charge of Reconstruction despite his ties to Plame issue; Halliburton's contracts in NO; Davis-Bacon; Bush not understanding the full scope of the damage in the first days after Katrina; FEMA being merged into DHS, the list goes on.
As all the issues surrounding Katrina become more broad-based(poverty, emergency management capabilities, cronyism, racism) they take on lives of their own and become less about the disaster at hand and more about the ideology behind it. The disaster itself becomes less of a "talking point" and more a "point of reference." People have to be hammered with the multitude of areas of failure consistently. If Tim Russert asks Howard Dean about the role of poverty in the hurricane mess, Howard should also remind people that this is bigger than just a poverty issue and spill off everything else that went wrong. And keep repeating it. If you tell a lie often enough people will start to believe it, maybe it works for the truth as well.
Once the general population not directly affected by Katrina starts to get soft on it, the opposition party (if there really is one) should start running through the list again and keep it fresh....all the way into November '06.
September 17, 2005 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Washington Post reports today that Katrina reconstruction is a shambles of disorganization.
Lack of Cohesion Bedevils Recovery
Red Tape, Lapses in Planning Stall Relief
I don't see much evidence of overall planning and guidance," said Richard Murray, a public policy expert in Houston, which is hosting thousands of evacuees.
In an e-mail, Murray, who is director of the University of Houston's Center for Public Policy, wrote: "Couple a multi-state disaster of Katrina's magnitude, (including some of the poorer and less well-governed states in the union), add on a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy that had deteriorated in recent years, and a chief executive whose motto seemed to be, until yesterday, the buck stops there, and we get a helluva mess."
Katrina I - The Storm, the Flood and the Failure
Katrina II - The Environmental Catastrophe - Pumping the Toxic Gumbo
Katrina III - The Bush Recovery
At least Cooldidge put Hoover in charge of the 1927 Recovery.
Bush replaced a hack with his top huckster....Does Congress hold hearings any more?
September 17, 2005 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
You act like Carl Rove invented partisan politics. Your first to characteristics easily describe "Clinton era" guys like James Carville, and Paul Begalla. The last one sounds more like Sandy Berger though.
September 30, 2005 3:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Looks like another campaign slogan for "Dean-Pelosi 08"
September 30, 2005 3:52 AM | Reply | Permalink