Rove '72
Wednesday March 28, 2007
This is wild: Dan Rather interviews a young Karl Rove in the basement of Nixon re-election headquarters. Fast-forward to the four-minute mark, and prepare to be wowed by the cool sideburns, the full head of Rovian locks, and the intensity....
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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So Rove was "going places" way back when? This sounds like the "old Rod" rearing his right-wing head. You're the "new Rod," remember? Guys like Rove fooled you into supporting all sorts of positions from which you've had to recant. It's strange to hear the longing for the "good old days" in your details about the sideburns and youthfulness of the furture Herr Karl. The only place Rove was headed for back then was the "how can I, through lies and hubris, ironically destroy the Republican Party to which I have sold my soul" place. Or maybe jail. And he's finally just about arrived there.
I assumed Rod posted this because it's funny, as well as interesting to see both Rather and Rove 35 years ago. Of course, for the Looney Tune Left, nothing is ever funny: Rove is the Great Wizard who manipulates all world events (remember when Cronkite speculated that Rove had arranged for bin Laden's video appearance prior to the 2004 election?); the first imperative is that he be jailed for .... well, for the crime of getting Bush elected and reelected. As with the George P. Bush thread below, I expect this thread will provide more than a few amusing insights into the emotional hysteria that currently passes for "thought" on the American Left.
Good grief, Songtraveler, it was obviously a joke!!!! This is what politics does to people. "rearing his right-wing head." Take your medication, dude.
The first thing my young coworker said after the video was, "The White House looked so different without the fences and barriers."
Simon, dbkenner, Guys, don't you GET IT? I was JOKING when I spoke of the old "right-wing Rod"!
Do I have to spell it out for you? Just as Ann Coulter was only JOKING when she called John Edwards a fag, I was ONLY JOKING when I suggested that there was just a hint of the old-time admiration for Rove in Rod's post. I get it that all that right-wing stuff is just yesterday's news! Rod is AGAINST the war now! It's perfectly clear that Rod was engaging in thigh-slapping IRONY when he spoke of the "intensity" of the "young buck" Rove. He really tore Rove a new one, didn't he? So, please, guys--I GET Rod. His political opinions may change with the winds, but his humor is eternal.
I guess that in the future I'd better put the old smiley face in my posts when I'm joking so that I'm not misunderstood! :)
Friends don't let friends become humorless Marxist-Leninists.
Good grief, ST, what a drippy, snide set of posts. Had I seen James Carville in a 1972 interview showing the same intensity, I would have made the same observations. Must political correctness drive all sense of appreciation for human qualities out of your line of vision? I find the feral political nature of Carville and Rove fascinating, and a little frightening, but all too human. It would appear that to you, to observe anything human in a figure like Rove is to reveal oneself as a fraud and an ass. I find your personal remarks about my character insulting and unwelcome, and I invite you to reconsider them.
Hey Rod, I have reconsidered my last post, and you're right--I'll grant it's at least a little over the top. Maybe more than a little. But as for my thinking that Rove is a very bad guy, I'll stand by that. Human--sadly, yes. But there wasn't a hint of your "feral" assesment in that fun-filled glance back at the Nixon White House and the young buck with the semi-long hair down in the basement. Is our fellow human Karl Rove more on the side of the good guys, Rod? Or is he mostly a bad man? Is he wise, or is he cunning? As for your recent renouncing of your pro-war stance, I've probably been guilty of saying "Too little, too late," when I could have been saying "Welcome aboard." Rove, I suspect, will go to his grave never making the kind of admissions you've made on this utterly serious, utterly tragic matter.
But in my second post I was responding more to Simon and dbkenner than to you. The two of them had accused me of humorlessness, of all things, the only charge of theirs that got under my skin. Hence the easy target of Ann Coulter, hence the "don't try to hunt this bear with your popgun" rhetoric. Let me say that your latest post on the psychodynamics of the global warming debate is thoughtful, nuanced, fair-minded. I also hope Al is wrong, but fear he isn't. You have a lively site here. That's why I'm hanging around, hoping to learn as well as to teach. I try to deal in ideas, even when "your" people come after me. Finally, nothing I've said has been really personal regarding you. I'm speaking about anyone who was all for the war before he was against it. When Rove cooked up the idea in South Carolina to save Bush the nomination that McCain was crazy from his years in Vietnam as a POW, and that he now had a black baby--that's personal. And that's the Rove I remembered as you were praising his sideburns, however ironically. Good luck with the bees, and with the next book.
When Rove was in this 1972 video, I believe McCain was being shot at in a Vietnam prison and George W. Bush was favoring shots of Wild Turkey. Food for thought. Circa 2000. Happy belated something.
It's always nice to go back and see why Dan Rather was the William Shatner of network news...
Sorry, had something come up and forgot to finish my thoughts... Is it just me, or did Rove look like a hippie Al Franken in those glasses??
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