Poor WATB
by digby
Poor Karl. So misunderstood. In his petulant, whining interview with the NY Times this morning he almost breaks into tears at how terribly he’s been misunderstood. He’s such a nice fellow and everyone thinks he’s so darned mean. It’s the Demooocrats who were the dividers when every now and then a small minority of them would raise a tepid peep against the administration’s policies.
He only has one regret, about the one time when he treated someone he works with unkindly:
“I remember having a conversation with a colleague — I want to say not only a colleague, but a very close friend — and responding out of frustration at the end of a seemingly long, continuing dialogue that turned into an argument, and saying something unkind, and it was the worst I ever felt at the White House. I later apologized to him for it.”
Karl, you see, is normally a very mild mannered fellow who brings ice cream bars to all his colleagues on Friday afternoons. His calm and kind demeanor has been well documented:
Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!” As a reporter, you get around—curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events—but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking. This went on without a break for a minute or two. Then the aide slipped out looking a bit ashen, and Rove, his face ruddy from the exertions of the past few moments, looked at me and smiled a gentle, Clarence-the-Angel smile. “Come on in.” And I did. And we had the most amiable chat for a half hour.
He told the NY Times he wasn’t even involved in that legendary smear campaign against Max Clelend:
Mr. Rove was asked whether harsh Republican attacks on the national security credentials of various Democrats in 2002, orchestrated by him, had added to the climate. Among the advertisements that year was one from the Georgia Senate race in which the Republican, Saxby Chambliss, called the Democratic incumbent, Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran soft on defense and flashed the menacing image of Osama Bin Laden.
“President Bush and the White House don’t write the ads for Senate candidates,” Mr. Rove said, calling himself “a convenient scapegoat,” and blaming Democrats for their losse
Gee, I wonder where people got the idea that he was intimately involved in that smear?
Karl Rove’s legacy in Georgia includes a 2002 U.S. Senate race remembered as one of the most negative in the country.
Republicans needed to take control of the Senate to help move President Bush’s agenda. They wanted to take out U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat. That’s where Rove came in.
First, the White House crushed the campaign of another Georgia Republican, Bob Irvin, a former leader of the state House, by announcing Bush’s support for then-U.S. Rep. Saxby Chambliss in the primary —- a race in which the White House rarely intervenes.
“This is one of those rare instances where, with all due deference to other Republicans involved, control of the Senate is so important to the president’s agenda that he will back one of the candidates,” Rove said at the time.
Chambliss easily won the nomination and set his sights on Cleland, a disabled veteran of the Vietnam war.
With the backing of the White House, Chambliss was running competitively, and late in the campaign, he dropped an advertising bomb.
In the now-famous ad, pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein appeared on the screen followed by a picture of Cleland.
A protégé of White House political guru Karl Rove produced the controversial Republican National Committee ad targeting Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Harold Ford Jr., that some have called racist, CBS News has learned.
The ad, in which a white woman with blonde hair and bare shoulders looks into the camera and whispers, “Harold, call me,” and then winks, was produced by Scott Howell, the former political director for Rove’s consulting firm in Texas.
[…]
Howell is no stranger to controversy. He was media consultant for Sen. Saxby Chambliss when his campaign ran an ad showing a picture of then-Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, alongside Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Coincidence, I’m sure.
With all the unfair and unfounded battering he takes, at least he hasn’t lost his puckish sense of humor:
As Mr. Rove left the IHOP for his hotel here in Waco — some 20 miles from the president’s vacation ranch — it was evident the degree to which he had become a public figure. He was twice stopped by well-wishers who said they admired him.
Later, Mr. Rove sent a note: “I didn’t plant the guy at the IHOP or the woman at the hotel but it would be the subtle personal touch that the Evil Genius would do to throw you off the scent, don’t you think?”
Actually, this is vintage Rove. there’s nobody in the whole wide world who has promoted the idea of Rove-the-mastermind more than Karl Rove. In fact, his legendary jujitsu skill is pretty much all in his self-serving myth making, as he shows here. He knows there are people all over the country who are saying right now, “I’ll bet he did plant them.”
In this pouty interview he defends everything he ever did, blames the Democrats for everything that’s gone wrong and then puts down the one decent, pure and good thing about the Bush white house, the only member of the admnistration I truly admire: Barney. What an ass.
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