Salon has an article up today that summarizes the transition of Karl Rove from disgraced Bush adviser to prized political analyst for Fox News. The article notes that in the three months since Rove went on the air to offer sage observations, the network has not acknowledged once the informal advisory role plays in the presidential campaign of John McCain, even though Rove has not only provided such advice but also maxed out on personal donations to the campaign.
I do believe the network should disclose Rove's real relationship to McCain, as other networks do for their pundit/consultants. But the Salon piece implicitly suggests that Rove's advice helps McCain, which seems pretty dubious at this point. MS-01 might have been a special election, but let's not forget that the local GOP ran their candidate on the Rove playbook of mobilizing the base around their fear of the other and that they lost badly. One hardly needs to mention that the 2006 midterm elections sounded the death knell for Rove-style electoral politics, which Salon itself described itself shortly before the 2006 elections as "Bush's Brain Found Lacking."
I for one hope that McCain follows Rove's advice. I hope McCain tries to replicate the 2004 campaign. And this isn't because I think Rove's politics are healthy for the country (they are not), but because I want them to visibly fail in a presidential election, and fail they will. I've was never been convinced by Obama's claims aoout "changing" our politics, but it certainly helps him as a candidate to appear calm, cool and above the fray -- especially if the opposition is running a dirty campaign -- only engaging to swat down absurdities like the notion of "appeasement." We all know the GOP is going to sink to new lows this Fall appealing to the darkest fears of their base, but it's not the base that matters. What matters are the voters who are likely to abandon the GOP this year. And the best way to help them jump ship is to give them a choice between the old GOP politics and a Democrat who appears unaffected by those politics. Letting Karl Rove whisper in McCain's ear seems to me the best way to make that happen.
--Mori Dinauer
