Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

When popular Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon, who would eventually serve his state in the U.S. Senate, was holding a rally at his headquarters while running for statewide office early in his career, Rove borrowed a page from the dirty tricks playbook of his political idol Richard Nixon.

In an attempt to embarrass Dixon and other local Illinois Democrats, Rove emissaries visited a downtrodden section and passed out handbills to alcoholics and derelicts, inviting them to a party replete with free food and drink.  A group of the most unfortunate citizens of the community subsequently descended on Dixon headquarters and ruined the candidate's best-laid plans.

Did this Rove maneuver embody genius?  There can be no reasonable doubt that an Einstein creating a theory of relativity or a Beethoven writing a Ninth Symphony embodies genius.  

Does it require genius to engage in what would by the gentlest definition constitute tasteless mischief?  Is rounding up the most tragic and downtrodden of a citizenry and using them cruelly as pawns, motivating them to descend on a political meeting in the expectation of free food and drink, in any way reflective of the creativity of an Einstein, Beethoven or Shakespeare?

Other incidents abound in this revealing documentary about the checkered past of Rove.  When he sought to destroy the momentum of Mark White in his race for governor of Texas against Rove's candidate, William Clements, Rove called the media to report an incident of a bugging of his office.  

The only person with any motive to plant the bug, according to Rove, was the White campaign.  The bug only carried a short distance and needed periodic battery restoration.  Savvy reporters like Glenn Smith were convinced that Rove, who had seemingly the only motivation to do so to alter the race's dynamics, had supervised the planting of the bug.

At a time when Rove sought to destroy a thorn in the Republican side, populist Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower, the ruthless political operator used an FBI agent who shared his political views, Greg Rampton, to secure indictments of two of Hightower's leading subordinates.  

They were ultimately convicted in a trial replete with the stench of political opportunism.  One of the victim's fathers died during the ordeal from apparent strain.  Again, is this high level genius in motion?

There was also more to the Rampton story.  The right hand man that Rove chose not to acknowledge was finally transferred out of Dallas to Idaho.  It was there that his activities destroyed the government's case against Randy Weaver and other defendants in the scandalous Ruby Ridge trial with its many tragic implications, including death.

From there Rampton was transferred quickly out of Idaho to the FBI's Denver headquarters.  Soon thereafter he vanished from sight.  It appeared that the FBI had seen fit to ride Rampton out of the Bureau as silently as possible.  

Such is the track record of Karl Rove's stalwart Dallas ally.  In the manner of Rove, Rampton was a strong self-acknowledged Christian.  Of course, so is Rove.  Did they perchance ever hear of the New Testament and the words of Christ of "love your enemy."  Then again, the mandate of the religious right has always been to rewrite Christianity and spell it out in their terms, meaning the narrowest possible.  

The list goes on and on as John Weaver, a soft spoken political consultant who ran the campaign of Senator John McCain against Rove's candidate George W. Bush in the South Carolina Republican Primary, one of the foulest in American history, emerges as one of the film's true voices of reason.  

When asked the pragmatic question of, "Well, doesn't Rove's strategy work?" Weaver replied quietly to the effect of, "Shouldn't we be trying to do the right thing?"

Weaver explained that McCain, after hearing criticism from citizens who considered the sludge level attack ad campaign to be a shameful disgrace, vowed that he would keep activity at a higher level from that point.  

The same was not true of a Bush campaign that featured racism and anti-Catholicism with large doses served up by the contingent at Paleolithic and bigoted Bob Jones University.  Did this campaign embody genius?

After watching this informative film two points stand out clearly: 1) Rove has been assisted by a stacked deck of seemingly endless corporate capital to run television attack ads; 2) a supplicant media has been reluctant to expose him.  

There were all too few Glenn Smiths and Molly Ivins's to expose a master of dirt bag politics along with the opportunists who hire and finance him along with the sycophants who zealously applaud him for his efforts.  

What a shame.  Rove's antics are all too obvious to anyone with any political savvy.  His tawdry past needs to be analyzed with greater clarity and frequency.