Karl Rove: Why Do We Care?

Today's should-have-been Friday, SHB Saturday, SHB Sunday, post is on the subject of our late and mostly unlamented "presidential advisor" Karl Rove. For the record I was originally going to blog about highway design but I couldn't really think of a clever way to make that into a lengthy enough post to be worthwhile. And I couldn't really think of anything about Rove either, though I've been wanting to comment on that for a while, until a bit of a brainstorm this morning.

I should like to go on record as stating, against the long- and firmly-held belief of probably 85% of my friends and relations, that I do not think Karl Rove is a bad man, overall. Accusations on that whole Valerie Plame thing, I'll give you those are not good, if true. And, need I remind everyone, we live in a country where you're innocent until proven guilty in a courtroom, not the media. Besides which, she's still alive, and so is her husband, so regardless of the criminality of the event it didn't kill anyone (though it *was* life-threatening, possibly, as I understand it) and so I am prepared to pass it off as the usual corruption. I do not approve of corruption; however it is ridiculous to assume that this sort of stuff doesn't go on all the time. I think it has pretty much gotten to the point in this country where when we prosecute corrupt politicians it's because we're annoyed with ourselves for voting for someone stupid enough to get caught, not because of the actual offence.

But I digress.

Mainly people don't like Karl Rove because of his status, real or supposed, as Bush's "evil genius". A lot of the partisanship comes because the Democrats are jealous that they can't seem to find an evil genius of their own. I mean, IMHO, Howard Dean's tenure as DNC chairman helped bring the party back to grassroots organising and that was a key factor in winning the 06 elections (and possibly 08, the way things are currently looking). That was a smart, clear-eyed move. Yet nobody decries Dean as an evil genius for doing smart things that got his party elected and put in legislative control. Debates on the supposed liberality of the media, I will not entertain here in this context. But generally, my point is that Democrats do whatever they can to put the balance their direction and get elected as well -- Rove's just had a rough time of it because he was better at it for many, many years and for a long time the headless Democrats couldn't get to his smartness level so the only tactic left was to pull him down to theirs. And that's worked surprisingly well for them.

I have a theory, and that theory is this: People respect the presidency, to some degree. I know, radical concept. Generally, historians agree that there's a "credibility gap" starting with Nixon that has made people pretty much not respect the presidency any more, on a downward slide that Reagan did nothing to arrest with Iran-Contra, that Clinton certainly didn't help with his canoodling (though I think many, many politicians do this -- even Hyde from Utah had a problem in this area), and Bush Jr. hasn't helped with a good number of things he's engaged in while President. Still, there exists some degree of respect, I think, for the office if not necessarily the person holding it. And so we would rather assume that, yes, Americans are smart (we like to pat ourselves on the back), and we wouldn't really have elected an evil, twisted, manipulative man to the presidency. We prefer to think that he's a simple, good-hearted man who has been led astray by evil councillors. That way it's not really our fault (because who elected Rove? or Rumsfeld? or Wolfowitz? Nobody did).

What I find intriguing is that this is not a new idea. It's a very old one, in fact. Having just finished a book on the Wars of the Roses (by Alison Weir, the second time I've read this one, also, so if you can't tell I recommend it), that's where you're going to get examples from. Henry VI was a terrible king, weak-minded, indecisive, and easily led. When Richard, Duke of York, raised the red flag of rebellion against him, take a stab at the primary cause? To reform the government and remove the greedy, arrogant, grasping favourites the king had surrounded himself with. No word, at least at the early stages of the wars, about deposing Henry (that came later) -- because there was still a great deal of respect for the *office* of the king, who had after all been sacredly anointed by God. And in fact the Yorkists were extremely moderate in their aims while rebelling; it was constantly to "reform the government"; they refrained from taking the ultimate step of declaring that Richard had a better claim to the throne for an excessively long time, and only finally settled on it when it became apparent that they had little other choice because Henry would never abandon his advisers. And later, when Richard's son Edward IV's chief supporter Richard Neville, "the kingmaker" Earl of Warrewyk (or Warwick; I prefer the spelling he himself used) defected to the other side and supported Henry VI's return to power, his ostensible reason was to remove from influence the supremely grasping family of Elizabeth Wydville, Edward's wife, who had snapped up pretty much all the offices and vacant peerages of the realm (being gentry originally, this was particularly galling do Warrewyk, whose family fought at the side of William the Conqueror). Mainly the Kingmaker's annoyance was that he was thus neatly parried from grabbing all of those things for himself, let us make no assumptions about him being a pure and upstanding man, but the reasons he put about in his propaganda are rather familiar. Understandably so, really, when you look at the target audience -- he was trying to swing the commons of England to his side, and they had a great deal of respect for the sanctity of the King's person. Therefore it's not really the king's fault...he's just being led astray, don't you see?

Ditto that with the League of the Public Weal against Louis XI, a failed rebellion to remove the king's counsellors because he had actively promoted men of low birth to positions of importance (ie the beginnings of a meritocracy instead of an aristocracy), and the failed Praguerie that Louis had previously led against his own father, Charles VII. Same ostensible causes.

But to bring this more into the present, if I may direct the reader's attention to the excellently-researched book by Joachim Fest, "Plotting Hitler's Death", it may be noted that early stages of the anti-Nazi plotting centered around eliminating Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering, or some combination thereof, while retaining Hitler as the Fuhrer. They were under the impression that Hitler himself was not a bad man; just the people he surrounded himself with were, and if only they could be removed then everything would go back to usual happy state of things.

All of this sounds ludicrous to us now, obviously, but the point I think is clear enough: this is not an idea that dies easily, historically. We are much too agreeable to blaming somebody other than ourselves for our own problems, and particularly nowadays where our leaders are elected rather than appointed by the grace of God. Because if Bush is really a bad man, how much worse are we for having fallen victim to his charming texas drawl and electing him? Much safer to believe that's the truth, and that he's being led astray into the path of evil by those around him.

And for the record also, let me say here at the end that I am equally sure that if and when a Democrat gets elected President, we'll see the same sort of thing go on amongst those who are opposed to whoever that ends up being. It's not a one-party fault in our thinking; I think everyone falls prey to it.