Requiem for a trickster

OK, OK, I'll admit straight out that I'm way beyond biased on this, but...

Whatever will King George do for a brain now that Karl Rove won't be around? Our own Axis of Republican Evil Acts will be spending more time with his family - at least until the other shoe drops on some of the illegal activity in our current administration that he masterminded.

Yesterday while being interviewed on CNN Bill Bennett commented that there are five rooms lined with books floor to ceiling in Karl Rove's house. He's been a self-educated guy. While I'm generally a big fan of bootstrappers, perhaps there's a bit of breadth that has been missing in his choices of reading that has obscured his perception of ethics. Maybe he's just been reading tome after tome that reinforces his own worldview. Would be interesting to see a reading list...

Did you know that Rove's reputation for dirty tricks started way back in 1972 with a contested election among the College Republicans? According to Wikipedia, Terry Dolan of California (one of the other candidates) went anonymously to the Washington Post with recordings of several training seminars for young Republicans where Rove discussed campaign techniques that included rooting through opponents' garbage cans. On August 10, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the Post broke the story in an article titled "Republican Party Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks."

Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, who was implicated in the Watergate break-in and became the star witness for the prosecution, has been quoted as saying that "Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him."

The Karl Rove-Dubya affinity began in this same timeframe. In November 1973, Bush Sr. asked Rove to take a set of car keys to his son George W. Bush, who was visiting home during a break from Harvard Business School. It was the first time the two met. "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma - you know, wow", Rove recalled years later.

The flight jacket comment is particularly interesting considering that King George walked away from his obligation to the National Guard and, in effect, turned in his wings. All flight jacket, no plane.

By the way, Jim just asked me, "Did you ever notice that George H. W. doesn't allow his son to pilot the family boat?"