What if Democrats did the same? What if they practiced the take-no-prisoner school of politics, same as the GOP? What if their only interest was in winning – ethics, the Constitution, the public interest be damned? What if, in short, Harry Reid (or Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi) played the game of politics just like Karl Rove does? What if they played for keeps?
Have you heard about the two American soldiers captured and gone missing in Iraq? Maybe, maybe not. Well, if Reid were Rove, you’d never hear the end of it. It would be a national obsession, just like OJ and Natalee Holloway and Paris Hilton and god-help-us-whoever-is-the-personal-story-blown-completely-out-of-proportion-du-jour – and, indeed, just like the American hostages in Iran were, all the way back in the hopelessly naive days before Reagan. It would be all hostage, all the time. ‘News’casts, especially some lefty equivalent of Fox that knew where its corporate bread was buttered, would keep a relentless clock running, and you’d never hear the end of "America Held Hostage, Day 43!", as if two soldiers were an entire country of 300 million. The president would be increasingly portrayed as weak and ineffective as he was unable to rescue these two heroes. Of course, that would mean that he would lash out with some act of semi-random violence in order to be seen to be doing something, anything, probably the only result of which would be a boatload of senseless violence and death, likely to include the two soldiers themselves. But when practicing cynical politics, one doesn’t worry about such trivialities. If Reid were Rove, the only consideration would be winning, and American hostages make lovely tools for that purpose.
Did you hear the one about how Al Hurra television, the US government’s $63 million propaganda organ in the Middle East, unwittingly allowed terrorists to broadcast their violent message on its airwaves, because none of the Americans running the thing, er, spoke Arabic? No? You haven’t? Well, if Reid were Rove you’d never hear the end of that one, a screw-up so egregious that even the obsequious mainstream media ran a headline saying, "U.S. Government Gave Airtime to Terrorists, Official Admits". (Of course, if this had happened seven years earlier the headline would not have been "U.S. Government...", but rather "Clinton Administration Gave Airtime to Terrorists" – but that’s another story.) If Reid were Rove, George Bush, who is so inept that he has actually managed to gain a reputation for idiocy even from a sympathetic press and a do-nothing and say-nothing ‘opposition’ (why don’t we just get it over with already and call it the Democratic Pastry instead of the Democratic Party?), would be made to appear even more the buffoon for allowing this to happen on his watch. If Reid were Rove, the David Lettermans of this country would have a hold on this story like a pit bull chomping on a pair of jeans marinated in chicken grease. With a juicy leg inside.
If Reid were Rove, we’d see constant examples of Bush making a fool of himself on national security issues, and we would have seen them in 2004, when they counted. We’d see Bush promising to get bin Laden "dead or alive", then we’d see clips of bin Laden mocking Bush, six years later. We’d see Bush in 2002 saying "You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him... I truly am not that concerned about him." Then we’d see Bush this year at the Coast Guard graduation ceremony talking about all the bad things bin Laden has been cooking up. You know, about how he was only two or three weeks away from blowing up some passenger airplanes bound for America in what Bush described as "the most ambitious known al Qaeda threat to the homeland since 9/11". About how bin Laden is, according to Bush in this same speech, sending his best generals to Iraq to kill the American troops Bush put in harm’s way there.
If Reid were Rove, Democrats would make sure we saw endless loops of the president looking under his desk for the missing WMD and turning their absence into a joke. Then we’d be reminded that over 3500 Americans have gone to Iraq, supposedly to protect us from those WMD, and have since returned in body bags. While the president who sent them there clowns. Maybe it’s just me, but somehow, I don’t think the White House attempt at humor would appear quite so funny in 2007.
If Reid were Rove, Americans would know that the very same government that claims to be fighting a war against terrorism is now harboring a terrorist who has bragged about blowing up an airliner and killing the 73 people on board, and who has similarly touted his accomplishments in bombing busy nightclubs and hotels.
If Reid were Rove, you’d never hear the end of how Bush’s wondrous Department of Homeland Security (which, we’d be reminded, doesn’t include the CIA or the FBI) allowed a guy to enter the country carrying a deadly strain of tuberculosis, even though he was on the no-fly list. We’d be asked over and over again how we could expect to be safe from terrorism with a government that can’t even deal with a known medical threat crossing our borders.
In fact, if Reid were Rove, we’d be reminded that today is Day 2098 of the unsolved anthrax attack from 2001. And that tomorrow is Day 2099. And that the next day is...
If Reid were Rove, stories about small communities across America holding bake sales in order to buy armor for their kids going off to the war in Iraq would be seared into our collective consciousness. And then we’d be reminded of the no-bid contracts Halliburton got for Iraq, how the Vice President arranged those, how he still has financial interests in the company, and all the sordid details of the corruption and failure to perform in which it has indulged.
If Reid were Rove, you’d know Jack Abramoff so well by now that you’d feel like he was a (very unwanted) member of your family.
If Reid were Rove, we’d see images of Bush with a guitar in hand as New Orleans drowned, morphing into visions of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. We’d watch jumpy repeat cuts of Bush saying "Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job" over and over again, like some sort of video scratch track.
If Reid were Rove, every American taxpayer would know that their share of the national debt was now up to $60,000 and rapidly rising, and that Bush inherited the country’s largest surplus ever and immediately turned it into the largest deficit ever. We’d see images of working Americans buried under their tax bills. We’d be constantly told what portion of those cuts went to the rich, and how much they made from them. We’d see the nationalist and xenophobia cards played shamelessly as Americans were reminded how much of the country is now owned by China and Japan (to the accompaniment of ominous chords on a soundtrack). Then we’d be snidely informed that, "Bureaucrats in the government think our record-setting debt of $9 trillion is okay because it is not a historically high ratio against GDP. Whatever that means."
And if Reid were Rove, every American would know the roll call of dishonor, being reminded of how Bush’s daddy got him into the safe Texas Air National Guard, how Ashcroft took seven draft deferments, how Cheney took five and how Wolfowitz and almost all the rest never served. We’d see Cheney – or an actor playing him – repeat over and over "I had better things to do in the Sixties than fight in Vietnam". Like Michael Dukakis’s little soiree in a tank, or John Kerry’s oblivious I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it line, this would be made to haunt Cheney from here to oblivion.
And so on, and so forth, if Reid were Rove.
But Reid is not Rove, and so you don’t see any of this, and you’re not likely to. Is it because Democrats are morally superior to the GOP and to conservatives when it comes to the game of politics? To their credit, yes. Who could not be, when compared to these human horror movies of the right? But there’s more to the story, as well. Democrats are also embarrassing wimps, afraid to throw a punch, and often even to block one. And, they are complicit in far too many ways in the depravities of the right, even if they mostly just go along for the ride.
Would we want them to act as the GOP has, destroying the fabric of American democracy in a relentless pursuit of power at any cost? Yes and no. Unfortunately, this is not a question with simple black and white answers. It is, in fact, another variation of the age-old ends-versus-means conundrum. My general answer to the question is an emphatic no – American democracy, such as it is, is tattered enough from the regressive movement’s assaults of the last quarter-century, and even if that weren’t the case, anything that further diminishes it is almost assuredly a bad thing.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
