| June
19 , 2006
The Rove Fixation
The Left and the
Blathersphere
By ALEXANDER
COCKBURN
Before
me are the three press releases for the recent “Campaign for
America Future” (staged by “progressive” Democrats)
conference announcing the three daily schedules for the mid-June
sessions in Washington DC, entitled “Take Back America”.
The Iraq war did not feature at all on the first two days, and slunk
in to the proceedings briefly as one of the last panels, on the
last day, featuring, of course, Joe Wilson, husband of V. Plame.
In
other words, in an election year the organizers decided to avoid
almost entirely any scheduling of political discussion of a war
to which about 70 per cent of all Americans are opposed, and which
is topic A on every newscast and newspaper front page.
There
was no spot for Jack Murtha on these schedules. The Nation, politically
speaking a consort of “Campaign for America’s Future”,
pledges to support only candidates promising speedy withdrawal of
US forces from Iraq. On that guarantee Nixon would have won the
Nation's endorsement in 1968. Of course they'll promise you anything.
It would be more convincing if the Nation said now it won't endorse
anyone who has continued to vote appropriations for the war.
The
war grinds on, but the pwog Democrats prefer to talk about other
matters, such as the fact that Rove is not going to be indicted.
Thank God. the left will have to talk about something else for a
change. As a worthy hobby horse for the left, the whole Plame scandal
has never made any sense. What was it all about in the first analysis?
Outing a CIA employee. What’s wrong with that? Many years
ago a man came into the offices of the New Left Review in London
where I was manning the portcullis at the time and said his name
was Philip Agee and he wanted to write a book about the CIA. Did
we call for a special prosecutor to have this fellow hauled over
the coals? No we did not.
Rove
has swollen in the left’s imagination like a descendant of
Pere Ubu, Jarry’s surreal monster. There was no scheme so
deviously diabolical but that the hand of Rove could not be detected
at work. Actually the man has always been of middling competence.
He makes Dickie Morris look like Cardinal Richelieu.
Since
9/11 where has been the good news for the Administration? It’s
been a sequence of catastrophe of unexampled protraction. Under
Rove’s deft hand George Bush has been maneuvered into one
catastrophe after another. Count the tombstones: “Bring it
on”, “Mission Accomplished”, the sale of US port
management to Arabs. It was Rove who single-handedly rescued the
antiwar movement last July by advising Bush not to give Cindy Sheehan
fifteen minutes of face time at his ranch in Crawford.
And
when Rove’s disastrous hand is wrenched from the steering
wheel it passes to another bugaboo of the left, in the form of Dick
Cheney. It was the imbecilic vice president who gave Jack Murtha
traction last October when the Democrats were trying cold shoulder
him for calling for instant withdrawal from Iraq. In his wisdom
the draft-dodging Cheney insulted the bemedaled former drill instructor
as a clone of Michael Moore, and had to apologize three days later.
Rove
and Cheney, the White House’s answer to Bouvard and Pecuchet,
are counselors who have driven George Bush into the lowest ratings
of any American president. Yet the left remains obsessed with their
evil powers. Is there any better testimony to the vacuity and impotence
of the endlessly touted “blogosphere” which in mid June
had twin deb balls in the form of the Yearly Kos convention in Las
Vegas and the above-mentioned “Take America Back” folkmoot
of “progressive” MoveOn Democrats in Washington DC.
In
political terms the blogosphere is like white noise, insistent and
meaningless, like the wash of Pacific surf I can hear most days.
But MoveOn.Org and Daily Kos have been hailed as the emergent form
of modern politics, the target of excited articles in the New York
Review of Books.
Beyond
raising money swiftly handed over to the gratified veterans of the
election industry both MoveOn and Daily Kos have had zero political
effect, except as a demobilizing force.
The
effect on writers is horrifying. Talented people feel they have
produce 400 words of commentary every day and you can see the lethal
consequences on their minds and style, both of which turn rapidly
to slush. They glance at the New York Times and rush to their laptops
to rewrite what they just read. Hawsers to reality soon fray and
they float off , drifting zeppelins of inanity.
Take
Truthout, the site identified with William Rivers Pitt and Mark
Ash. After months and months of obsessive bloggings about the Plame
scandal Truthout contributor Jason Leopold declared on May 13 that
Karl Rove had been indicted on charges of perjury and lying to investigators.
Leopold cited “sources” averring that prosecutor Fitzgerald
had met for 15 hours with Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskind, that
Rove had told Bush and his chief of staff Joshua Bolton that he
was about to indicted.
“Details
of Rove’s discussions with the President and Bolton,”
Leopold confided , “have spread through the coridoors of the
White House, where low level staffers and senior officials were
trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration
that has been mired in a number of high profile political scandals
for nearly a year”. As his secret confidantes the apparently
omniscient Leopold invoked “ half dozen White House aides
and two senor officials who work at the Republican National Committee.”
In
the days that followed, came immediate, categorical denials from
Rove’s lawyer and the White House. The week progressed with
no indictment. It looked as though Truthout would have to sponge
the egg off its face. Truthout did nothing of the sort, insisting
as vehemently as any lunatic claiming adbuction by aliens that it
stuck by its story.
On
June 12 Leopold even raised the ante: “Four weeks ago, during
the time when we reported that White House political advisor Karl
Rove was indicted for crimes related to his role in the leak of
CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, the grand jury empanelled in
the case returned an indictment that was filed under seal in US
District Court for the District of Columbia under the curious heading
of Sealed versus Sealed.” This, Leopold wrote, could be well
mean the Rove indictment.
Rarely
has a story been more swiftly and conclusively undercut. Later that
same day Prosecutor Fitzgerald formally advised Rove’s lawyer
that he did not anticipate seeking charges against Rove. Truthout’s
reaction? On June 13, Truthout’s chief editor, Mark Ash told
a reporter, that they were sticking by their story, and that Rove’s
non indictment was “directly contradicted by the information
we have.”
Only
two days later did Ash reluctantly strike his colors, confiding
to Truthout’s punch drunk audience that “Obviously there
is a major contradiction between our version of the story and what
was reported yesterday. As such, we are going to stand down on the
Rove matter at this time. We defer instead to the nation's leading
publications.”
Game
to the end, Ash added defiantly, “In that Mr. Luskin has chosen
the commercial press as his oracle - and they have accepted - we
call upon those publications to make known the contents of the communiqué
which Luskin holds at the center of his assertions. Quoting only
those snippets that Mr. Luskin chooses to characterize in his statements
is not enough. If Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has chosen
to exonerate Mr. Rove, let his words - in their entirety - be made
public.”
Welcome
to blog world. They’re loonies, beyond any sanction or reproof
by reality. These people are going to stop a war, change the direction
of our politics? They make Barbra Streisand sound like Che Guevara.
At
the Kos convention if we are to believe – which I do –
the hilarious reports by Michael J. Smith on our CounterPunch site
– the ugly matter of the war in Iraq was scarcely raised,
as the Kosniks reserved the surge of their passion for… Joe
Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame.
Meanwhile
there are lines around the block for Al Gore’s movie about
global warming. Can we “take back” the weather? Of course
not, unless by pharmaceutical means. The FDA has given final approval
to GlaxoSmithKline to launch Wellbutrin XL, to combat “Seasonal
Affective Disorder”. Is there any good political news? Yes,
Jack Murtha says he will challenge Steny Hoyer for the post of Democratic
leader, for the 2007/8 Congress, if the Democrats recapture the
House
next November. Such would be an encouraging prospect, but this is
the party that couldn’t pick up Duke Cunningham’s seat
in southern California, after the Dukester donned his prison overalls.
Footnote:
Portions of this column ran in the print edition of the Nation that
went to press last Wednesday.
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