The Passion of the Rove 


My spin! My spin! Why hath thou forsaken me? 

Whatever you may think about the just-concluded series of debates (which will in many cases depend on your existing tropisms), they have had at least one consequence that most rational observers should be able to agree upon, whether they view it with dismay or with glee: the aura of inevitability that is so important to a modern Republican presidential campaign, and which had so many of my co-religionists (who seem to exhibit bipolarity as regularly as their opposite numbers display paranoid delusions of grandeur/persecution) in a funk throughout the latter summer, has been punctured decisively. Bush may prevail in the contest by fair means or foul, but it's unlikely that his camp will recapture the persuasive triumphalism, so bracing to the faithful and so demoralizing to the foe, that Rove had hoped to have hanging over the campaign in its latter weeks. This represents a significant weapon struck from the GOP's grasp, and they cannot be happy to have lost it.

Countless commentators have remarked on Kerry's "presidential" bearing in the debates. This is part consequence merely of being allowed to stand onstage with the All-Highest, but there are two or three other factors in play here: First, what Kerry is not: Rove and his co-enablers in the SCLM aren't big in matters of proportion and restraint. When you undertake a spot of character assassination a scalpel is a more effective weapon than a trowel, but Karl just couldn't help himself, and after a summer of TwitBoatVets the "undecided" segment of the viewing public (whoever the fuck these may be) who had been prepared to see a cringing coward—since he obviously faked those medals—and a commie sympathizer (who smeared Our Brave Boys in Vietnam) must have been left scratching their heads when the liberal/coward/traitor they'd been primed to see didn't appear onstage on the first or on subsequent nights.

Second, what Bush is: C-Plus Augustus does not do well outside of the bubble. Give him a comparatively simple script, and ride herd on him at rehearsals, and he's disciplined enough to master the necessary delivery. In his infrequent press conferences before the thoroughly neutered courtiers of the Washington press corps, it's understood that it's poor form to ask the pResident a tough question, and should one of the Usual Suspects unexpectedly stand upright and frame an inconvenient inquiry (his last ever, since the pRes is advised beforehand as to preterite and elect), Bush will make a firm, courageous choice among his available scripted responses and deliver that, germane or no (with "no child left behind" his script of last resort). There is an insubstantiality about the man ("But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked") that can only bear passing scrutiny against a meticulously stage-managed backdrop, and the debates, such as they were, involved more variables than the handlers could count on their imperfect instrument to field reliably.

Finally, what Kerry is: What finally registered during the past three confrontations was the sheer solidity of Kerry and the insubstantiality of Junior. In the April 1971 footage of Going Upriver (on which I hope to have more to say anon), JK is revealed as an extraordinarily gifted, grounded, articulate and self-possessed young man. A certain amount of Senate coral has settled upon him in twenty years, but the outline of a serious, realistic, ethical and capable man is readily descried across the stage from...what? A nervous poseur, shifting affect from one debate to the next according to his handlers' take on the latest focus group. Exactly the rap four years ago on Al Gore.

It ain't over till it's over, of course, and Karl Rove doesn't go gently into that good night. But he's been wounded, and I take heart. 

Posted: Thu - October 14, 2004 at 08:40 PM          

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