Op Ed: Rove’s Arrogance Repelled GOP Leaders and Damaged Our Democracy

Rove’s sudden departure is now seen in D.C. as “always inevitable” because “sooner or later, arrogance always collects its costs”. Little Man Couldn’t Swing Large Issues, Operate Policy Process Demanded by Democracy, Still Respected by Millions

Karl Rove doing his act on a stage Courtesy: lostnation.tv

(BEND, Ore.) - Campaign-confrontation and corporate-contributing dollars can surely sweep even rigorously democratic U.S. elections, whenever still discerning, determined voters are lulled into paying only partial attention - and the “free press” fails its Constitutional responsibilities.

Karl Rove proved his political-campaign prowess that way; but demands for “common-decency cooperation and essential political people-skills” then-demanded proved too much for him to manage - and manipulation plus money failed to take over the game.

Governance-success is “the real name of that game” - and on that scoring sheet he and his President are already markedly a failed case, with all the catastrophic consequences now coming due rapidly and remorselessly.

Confrontation and complicity, when matched mercilessly vs. real cooperative effort for the nation, failed again; as it has ever since the Federalist beginnings for this democracy.

Yet in today’s world that criterion for real, continuing governance success, practical cooperation is absolutely essential.

Rove’s sudden departure is now seen in D.C. as “always inevitable” because “sooner or later, arrogance always collects its costs”.

That’s the most painful lesson we’ve learned from the current Bush “administration” - now revealed in all its debacle-and-debris by the departure of Rove, long termed the responsible “Big-Voice” in the Bush Presidency now dribbling away in detailed defeat and desperation.

Even GOP leaders in Congress finally tossed in their collective considerations, citing in detail “dangerous-moves based on flawed political analysis and erroneous judgments”; adding their very personal (and essentially negative) predilections, always a decisive component at the right political moment.

“Full disclosure” of all the complexities of this colossal collapse, from very large expectations downwards to what history may well write off as “the worst Presidency since the Revolution”, is still to come.

But not a question remains --after some extremely insightful, probing exploratory reporting by numerous nationally-noted publications on why Rove departs now, suddenly and surely out-bidden, too.

That coverage includes incisive intra-party statements - now openly revealed for the first time--that Rove’s easy “Road to the White House” and its control-desk was about to come to an abrupt and brutal dead-end.

Steamrolling citizen-voter meetings nationwide and aggressively confrontational working tactics can win votes; but it is “hard work and wise decision on crucial issues, right there in Congress, that get the governance job done”; in the words of one quoted GOP leader. asking the reporter to remain anonymous even now.

“As a political strategist, Karl Rove offered a brilliant answer to the wrong question,” David Frum declares. “The question he answered so successfully was a political one”: How to win elections.

He continues: ”The question he unfortunately ignored was a policy question”: What does the nation need? Frum is a noted conservative leader allied with the American Enterprise Foundation, thus a believable insider-conservative source.

Practical cooperation and close control via “the human factor” have always been paramount demands for successful governance; without which “protocol” and “bureaucracy” and “political payoff” can bring short-term gains, but in the long run will exact inevitable - and always brutal - costs of their own.

That fact alone tells us all we ever need to know about the Bush betrayal of solid Republican principles as well as defiance of plain old political common sense; demonstrated in detail and decency by most preceding American elected leadership at every level from City Hall to the Cheney-town once known as Washington, D.C.

The irony in the two names now so memorably joined --Cheney and Washington-- is more highly apparent with every rapid departure of ostensible “leaders” from the site of this deplorable disaster; leaving behind distinctly diminished and damaged Constitutional components dear to all Americans --and an irrevocable public record.

“The American public needs to understand the full story of how this White House --with Mr. Rove pulling many of the strings - has spent the last six and a half years improperly and dangerously politicizing the federal government”, an Editorial in The New York TIMES states today (8/14/07).

The TIMES then demands Congressional pursuit of every possible means to make sure Rove is returned to face the now-infuriated Congressional investigators whose subpoenas he has so adroitly dodged.

“Congress needs to use all its powers to bring Mr. Rove back to Washington to testify --in public and under oath-- about how he used his office to put politics above the interests of the American people,” states “The Thunderer” --still a paramount voice in U.S. journalism.

Does that somehow sound like that fatal word: IMPEACHMENT? Or, perhaps, an open, public invitation for “the Nixonian imperative"?

Not only is this without doubt the most secretive of all American administrations but also it is the most damaging and destructive to the very Constitution itself; as continuing conclusive coverage by competent members of the Washington press corps continues to demonstrate.

This can is seen in any one of the national news magazines; and, in profusion now, on the Internet, proving its unique political propensities.

Despite the Bush erosions, abrasions and open wounds inflicted on our American Constitution, that historic document still remains our most precious inheritance of all from the Founders.

They were insightful enough to build-it-strong and straight when they did the original creation, unique in the world then; and now still worth every effort to protect and preserve its guiding principles.

Even with its well-known and inevitable flaws it is still the criterion for all similar democratic documents founding the worldwide crop of emerging nations, eager to pattern themselves after our long learning experience --still unique on this Earth.

When “the media” make only enfeebled efforts to fully illuminate and explain key issues and consequential social, economic and cultural costs, the conflict of determined political confrontation-at-all-costs with common-sense cooperation for the commonweal interests becomes exceedingly offensive and threatening; especially dangerous to our still-developing democracy for those changes demanded as the world itself turns ever more rapidly.

Knowledgeable observers are now reporting that it was in part “what the media did --and what it didn’t do” that first built Bush and then ruined Rove, despite dedicated defense from the White House.

It is never too late, in any true democracy, for that most essential of all democratic components - a truly free press - to operate effectively - precisely in such confrontational and complex situations as this one.

Let us see “how free and still potent our ostensibly powerful media really are, now,” one noted media-critic has commented on the Rove and Bush revealing realities now so openly exposed to public view.

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Reader’s Note:
Current issue of The ATLANTIC has an extremely prescient article titled “Why Karl Rove Couldn’t Deliver”, by Joshua Green, Senior Editor, published just days before Rove’s fleeing from the heat in Washington. Many other published and Internet sources were used for this Op-Ed, list available on request.

Quotes are verbatim, shortened, or summarized to fit space and usage requirements here; full list with original sources available on request.

“Stay tuned” for upcoming Op Ed exploration of the past thirty-year GOP-record making the Bush-Rove debacle inevitable and the most dangerous attack on our democracy since the Revolution itself.