Sympathy for Karl Rove

There is a special place in my heart for Karl Rove, and I'm not being ironic. We've had similar career experiences.

Maybe I think of him often because I see him so clearly. He's everywhere. Even when he's most invisible, he leaps out at me. Sometimes it's a fragment of speech, or the name of a program, or in the things people say and don't say.

Who could be against The Clean Air Act? And what true patriot would deliberately slash our cherished Bill of Rights were it not named The Patriot Act?

If No Child Left Behind were named All Children Left Behind By a Federal Takeover of Locally Funded Public Schools that Distracts Educators with Tantalizing Grants Most Will Never Receive, nobody would've gone for it. Especially the Christian Half of Karl's Wild Party. That's why he included in the name the Christian keywords "Left Behind." As any chain-reader of the books will attest, the last thing a saved soul needs is to get left behind, and when it comes to their children, Christians are like lions. They signed up.

People fall for this stuff because people trust the people they've entrusted to be trustworthy. It is the social contract, or was. Everybody knows that nobody would just slap a nice cuddly name on a ruthless piece of legislation and expect anybody to believe it's anything other than what it says it is. Who'd do something that sophomoric?

Karl. Karl would. Karl steals his power from the public trust. While America watches the movie, Karl sneaks backstage the powers that be and reveals to them all that is theirs if only they sign on now; deals sealed less by wink than twinkle. There's pork in bad ideas, and those who represent the public interest tend to represent their own when they're assured nobody's watching. Karl Rove, without judgement, gives generous cover to all who come, and greatly is he loved.

Magnificent are his achievements, staggering his spare physics, for gently he tugs at just the right string and a thousand Christian boats interlock to the Battleship Republican, squaring the power of both.

Rove's talents may only be master level Simony, but his real accomplishments are testaments to the superiority of whispers over speech, of rumors over news, image over substance, and the abiding gullability of the public.

Could it really be that simple, that cynical, that sinister? Oh, absolutely, it's all that and more. Rove's power is, by his own self-description, Rasputinlike. Rasputinlike.

Is it hubris? Or humor? His deadpan honesty, we conclude, is a joke. But the joke, as everybody knows, is where the truth hangs out. He's Rasputin all right. No disputin.'

Rove has the genes of a nerd, the soul of an artist and the heart of a teenager addicted to revenge. But he cares passionately about pleasing his boss, who's the coolest guy he ever met. George Bush is Karl's alter ego, his buddy, his friend, his boss, his completion, while Karl is George's entire left side.

Today, nearing the end of Act II, George II, these two best buds battle side by side their multiplying crises, some tsunamic, others swarming like tsetses: the Plame affair, the Katrina misunderstanding, the money trail out of Iraq, babes that don't belong in these pictures, and the total approval of the African-American community holding steady at 2%.

Karl, pierced and bleeding, is hauled back and forth to a grand jury a preposterous four times, but finds the strength for swordplay, defending now the president, himself, and his government from inside assaults by his own people, the so-called Christians--he made these people! Gurgling through a death rattle he manages to sneak in a cheer for old Harriet, but it's too late. He remains on the stage floor, dip to black, curtain, end Act II, intermission.

Whatever happens in Act III, the spirit of Karl Rove will remain central to the story, for it was Karl who showed us how to lie by telling part of the truth, and then another part of it, in such a manner as to nudge the public through a magnificent, but totally mental, maze. Rumor is there's cheese.

And Harriet. George's worst idea ever. And Karl. Pingmaster. Does he return to Pong? I see him staring now, at his fingers, not in jail but a place even worse in his mind. I was him, am him, but I quit that now, because lying for a living guaranteed I'd never find truth, and telling the truth guaranteed a sparcity of clients, so I split the difference and today I lie for free.

Karl Rove is no Curt Fisher--and I think if he knew my work even Karl Rove would admit that. Never heard of CW Fisher? Cover. Me and Karl, we share certain traits. We're both artists of a rare sort: who, by whispering, can levitate a people. But Karl, Karl went long. Went a little long.

Final thoughts: If the truth hurts enough to make you cry, it could either be a great lesson or a big stinking lie. But if the truth makes you laugh, then it's partially true, but which part is unclear. But if the truth sets you free, it'll set others free too. And that's its only measure. Truth sets free, lets free, makes free and is free, amen amen. Amen.

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