G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
After the White House: discordant tunes, fading glory
By Sidney Blumenthal
Created Aug 30 2007 - 9:36am
Even before his resignation as White House deputy chief-of-staff and senior
adviser to George W Bush takes effect on 31 August 2007, Karl Rove has
furiously launched himself on his legacy tour. Appearing on three Sunday
morning TV shows on 19 August, six days after his departure was announced
[1], he was intent on demonstrating the range of his political, military and
literary mastery. Rove rattled off statistics of minority-group voting
patterns for President Bush in the 2004 election as if the moment were the
apotheosis of the Republican Party. He cited Napoleon in order to justify
the Iraq war - "Look, Napoleon said that your battle-plan doesn't survive
the first contact with the enemy, but you still have to have a plan" - but
not Napoleon's remark after the retreat from Moscow: "There is only one step
from the sublime to the ridiculous."
Rove thrashed around in search of an appropriate character from fiction to
describe his ineffable and immortal being. "I'm Moby Dick", he began, but,
dissatisfied with identifying himself as the great white whale, drew upon
his wellspring of literature for yet other self-projections. "Let's face it.
I mean, I'm a myth, and they're - you know, I'm Beowulf. You know, I'm
Grendel. I don't know who I am. But they're after me." Hunted and hunter,
beast and warrior, author of his own tale nonetheless suffering an identity
crisis, a figure transcendent beyond history still pursued down dark alleys,
Rove finally rested [2] on a note of paranoia. If the demons were after him,
what would he not do to punish them?
When questioned about his indisputable part in the outing of covert CIA
operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Rove did what came easiest to him:
distorting reality, mangling facts and baldfaced lying - "dissembling, to
put it charitably", as Matthew Cooper, the former Tie magazine reporter,
said on NBC's Meet the Press [3] after observing Rove's interview there.
Rove's performance included not only petulantly refusing to apologise to
Plame ("No!"); repeating various canards about former ambassador Joseph
Wilson; claiming that he had not told MSBNC Hardball host Chris Matthews, as
Matthews had reported, that "Wilson's wife is fair game"; but also mimicking
word for word the perjured testimony of vice-president Dick Cheney's former
chief-of-staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby [3], who had falsely insisted that
he had not planted stories about Plame with reporters but after learning of
her identity from them had replied, "I've heard that, too." "I remember
saying, 'I've heard that, too'," said Rove brightly. "To imply that he
didn't know about [Plame's identity], or that he heard it in some rumour out
in the hallways, is nonsense", commented Cooper.
The second drafts of history
Rove, however, was not alone in burnishing his standing as statesman.
Michael Gerson [4], former chief Bush speechwriter, specialist in
faith-based rhetoric, now a columnist for the Washington Post and Newsweek,
joined his latest campaign. "I found Rove to be the most unusual political
operative I have ever known; so exceptional he doesn't belong in the
category", wrote Gerson on 17 August in the Post ("What History Taught Karl
Rove [5]"). "His most passionate, obsessive love - after his wife - is
American history." Thus fervour equals omniscience equals omnipotence. Rove
the secret Heathcliffe is also the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.
Gerson's proof is located not only in Rove's ability to quote Lincoln on
political technique and his unique collection of artefacts - "carefully
archived pictures of President William McKinley's funeral, original ballots
from the 1860 election" - but in Rove's "ideas". Neither the realities of
Bush's policies nor Bush's current abysmal poll ratings, Gerson argues,
reflect on them. "The complications of Iraq have obscured Rove's victories,
not undone them", he writes. Contrary to Matthew 7:20, "Wherefore by their
fruits ye shall know them", belief and acts do not meet in Gerson's
doctrine. Through faith alone the spirit - and the Bush administration's
reputation - shall be reborn.
As Gerson preached to pagan Washington on behalf of Rove's virtue, he found
himself defending his own. Like Rove, he stood accused of grandiosity,
dishonesty and hypocrisy. But while gladiatorial combat in the arena is
routine for Rove, for the evangelical Gerson, cast as a saint by a press
corps guided by its penchant for stereotype - "deeply religious", according
to the Washington Post; the "president's spiritual scribe", in Time's
version - the assault came as a surprise.
Michael Gerson was credited with writing Bush's most memorable lines, his
momentous speeches and inaugural addresses, infusing them not only with
religious uplift but also with ideological [6]. The character of Gerson has
served as earthly evidence of Bush's spiritual calling. In numerous
journalistic accounts, Gerson was depicted as selfless and pure of heart.
But the article about him appearing in the September 2007 issue of the
Atlantic Monthly, written by Matthew Scully [7], a speechwriter who served
with him, portrays Gerson less as St Francis than Tartuffe, less Joan of Arc
than Sammy Glick. "For all of our chief speechwriter's finer qualities, the
firm adherence to factual narrative is not a strong point", writes Scully.
"The artful shaping of narrative and editing out of inconvenient detail was
never confined to the speechwriting. (The phrase pulling a Gerson, as I
recently heard it used around the West Wing, does not refer to graceful
writing.)"
In the article, "Present at the Creation [8]", Scully describes how Gerson
carefully crafted his own image as Bush's voice and conscience, conveniently
airbrushing the other speechwriters out of the picture. Scully recalls being
at a crowded meeting on 13 September 2001, with Bush, at which the president
declared, "We're at war." In the version appearing in the Washington Post,
under the byline of Bob Woodward and two other reporters, "the rest of us
have vanished, and the president declares, 'Mike, we're at war.'"
The White House ticktock story (or detailed, minute-by-minute account), a
favourite of the prestige newspapers, showing their superior access, is
always fraught with manipulation. And the versions that appear are
invariably a tale agreed upon by those selected or volunteering to tell the
tale. Gerson was a master of the genre and the whole Washington press corps
was his keyboard, but especially Bob Woodward [9].
"Woodward's trilogy about the Bush years is a tale of speechwriting glory
that Mike himself could hardly improve upon", writes Scully. "Remember those
powerful and moving addresses the president gave after September 11?
According to Woodward's State of Denial, Mike wrote all of those speeches by
himself ... How do I break the news to Bob Woodward that his high-placed
source wrote not a single one of the lines quoted above, at best a third of
any of the speeches he mentions, and that the National Cathedral address
[10] was half-written before Mike even entered the room?"
Michael Gerson emerged [11] as a perfect hothouse flower of the religious
right and conservative infrastructure. After graduating from Westminster
Christian Academy, he majored in theology at the evangelical Wheaton
College, and was immediately recruited as a ghostwriter for Charles Colson,
the Watergate dirty trickster and felon who had become a religious-right
leader of the Prison Fellowship Ministries. Gerson has called Colson his
mentor, an example of "tremendous personal integrity". Gerson was soon
appointed a "senior policy advisor" at the Heritage Foundation, though
expert in no particular policy, and served as a speechwriter for a
succession of Republicans, from Senator Dan Coats of Indiana to Senator Bob
Dole. After Gerson's brief stint at U.S. News, Karl Rove signed him up for
the presidential campaign of George W Bush. From there, the rest is
mythology.
"The narrative that Mike Gerson presented to the world is a story of
extravagant falsehood", writes Scully. "He has been held up for us in six
years' worth of coddling profiles as the great, inspiring, and idealistic
exception of the Bush White House. In reality, Mike's conduct is just the
most familiar and depressing of Washington stories - a history of
self-seeking and media manipulation that is only more distasteful for being
cast in such lofty terms. There are rewards for such behaviour, and in
Mike's case the Washington establishment has raised him up as one of its
own - a status complete with a columnist's perch at The Washington Post."
A leap of faith
Scully's memoir is unusual in the annals of Washington tell-alls. Typically,
the disillusioned narrator wishes to distance himself from failure, assign
blame to others or expiate his guilt. Scully, however, desperately wants to
claim his proper share of credit for the Bush catastrophe. While he accuses
the devout Gerson [12] of bad faith, he never quite recognises why Gerson's
credit-hogging has seemed so plausible. Whether or not Gerson wrote what he
claimed to have written, the orotund, purple prose that is his style is
completely consistent with Bush's high-flown rhetoric. Phrases like "axis of
evil" mark Bush's language as a torrent of incoherence, arrogance and
fanaticism. But the stupidity of the ideas is no hindrance to the fight over
pride of authorship. Taking credit for the disaster is better than
anonymity, a Washington version of the Hollywood PR truism that there's no
such thing as bad publicity.
The conflict [13] between Matthew Scully and Michael Gerson is a clash
between two cardinal sins: the bearer of envy meets the bearer of false
witness. Scully is transparently envious of the rewards bestowed on Gerson
by the Washington Post Corp - both Post and Newsweek columns - suggesting a
payoff to a source, an unreliable one at that. He neglects the complicating
possibility of an ecumenical blessing bestowed on a suddenly socially
acceptable right-wing evangelical - Colson ghostwriter ascendant as Post
columnist - another bizarre twist in the twilight of the Bush period in
Washington.
But Scully's sua culpa is the Boys' Life [14] version of the Bush
presidency. He can't get over his infatuation with Bush. The worst charge he
levels against Gerson is that his self-promotion "diminishes" Bush's
"achievement". In contrast, Scully presents himself as a paragon of good
faith, the real true believer. "Six years later, with all that has gone
wrong in Iraq, I know one is now supposed to sigh with regret at how
mistaken we all were about Bush in those days, how foolish of us to think
the man had greatness in him ... And yet I think I recognize greatness when
it steps before me, and the sight of George W. Bush in those days left an
impression that has never worn off."
Still mesmerised by his heroic conception of Bush, Scully does not see in
Michael Gerson a representative figure of Bush's presidency. In his
inability to connect his words (whichever they were) to Bush's deeds,
moreover, Scully is little different from Gerson or Rove - or
Bush -promoting a legacy that ignores the realities of their history and
instead takes a leap of faith into myth.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Sidney Blumenthal
Created Aug 30 2007 - 9:36am
Even before his resignation as White House deputy chief-of-staff and senior
adviser to George W Bush takes effect on 31 August 2007, Karl Rove has
furiously launched himself on his legacy tour. Appearing on three Sunday
morning TV shows on 19 August, six days after his departure was announced
[1], he was intent on demonstrating the range of his political, military and
literary mastery. Rove rattled off statistics of minority-group voting
patterns for President Bush in the 2004 election as if the moment were the
apotheosis of the Republican Party. He cited Napoleon in order to justify
the Iraq war - "Look, Napoleon said that your battle-plan doesn't survive
the first contact with the enemy, but you still have to have a plan" - but
not Napoleon's remark after the retreat from Moscow: "There is only one step
from the sublime to the ridiculous."
Rove thrashed around in search of an appropriate character from fiction to
describe his ineffable and immortal being. "I'm Moby Dick", he began, but,
dissatisfied with identifying himself as the great white whale, drew upon
his wellspring of literature for yet other self-projections. "Let's face it.
I mean, I'm a myth, and they're - you know, I'm Beowulf. You know, I'm
Grendel. I don't know who I am. But they're after me." Hunted and hunter,
beast and warrior, author of his own tale nonetheless suffering an identity
crisis, a figure transcendent beyond history still pursued down dark alleys,
Rove finally rested [2] on a note of paranoia. If the demons were after him,
what would he not do to punish them?
When questioned about his indisputable part in the outing of covert CIA
operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Rove did what came easiest to him:
distorting reality, mangling facts and baldfaced lying - "dissembling, to
put it charitably", as Matthew Cooper, the former Tie magazine reporter,
said on NBC's Meet the Press [3] after observing Rove's interview there.
Rove's performance included not only petulantly refusing to apologise to
Plame ("No!"); repeating various canards about former ambassador Joseph
Wilson; claiming that he had not told MSBNC Hardball host Chris Matthews, as
Matthews had reported, that "Wilson's wife is fair game"; but also mimicking
word for word the perjured testimony of vice-president Dick Cheney's former
chief-of-staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby [3], who had falsely insisted that
he had not planted stories about Plame with reporters but after learning of
her identity from them had replied, "I've heard that, too." "I remember
saying, 'I've heard that, too'," said Rove brightly. "To imply that he
didn't know about [Plame's identity], or that he heard it in some rumour out
in the hallways, is nonsense", commented Cooper.
The second drafts of history
Rove, however, was not alone in burnishing his standing as statesman.
Michael Gerson [4], former chief Bush speechwriter, specialist in
faith-based rhetoric, now a columnist for the Washington Post and Newsweek,
joined his latest campaign. "I found Rove to be the most unusual political
operative I have ever known; so exceptional he doesn't belong in the
category", wrote Gerson on 17 August in the Post ("What History Taught Karl
Rove [5]"). "His most passionate, obsessive love - after his wife - is
American history." Thus fervour equals omniscience equals omnipotence. Rove
the secret Heathcliffe is also the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.
Gerson's proof is located not only in Rove's ability to quote Lincoln on
political technique and his unique collection of artefacts - "carefully
archived pictures of President William McKinley's funeral, original ballots
from the 1860 election" - but in Rove's "ideas". Neither the realities of
Bush's policies nor Bush's current abysmal poll ratings, Gerson argues,
reflect on them. "The complications of Iraq have obscured Rove's victories,
not undone them", he writes. Contrary to Matthew 7:20, "Wherefore by their
fruits ye shall know them", belief and acts do not meet in Gerson's
doctrine. Through faith alone the spirit - and the Bush administration's
reputation - shall be reborn.
As Gerson preached to pagan Washington on behalf of Rove's virtue, he found
himself defending his own. Like Rove, he stood accused of grandiosity,
dishonesty and hypocrisy. But while gladiatorial combat in the arena is
routine for Rove, for the evangelical Gerson, cast as a saint by a press
corps guided by its penchant for stereotype - "deeply religious", according
to the Washington Post; the "president's spiritual scribe", in Time's
version - the assault came as a surprise.
Michael Gerson was credited with writing Bush's most memorable lines, his
momentous speeches and inaugural addresses, infusing them not only with
religious uplift but also with ideological [6]. The character of Gerson has
served as earthly evidence of Bush's spiritual calling. In numerous
journalistic accounts, Gerson was depicted as selfless and pure of heart.
But the article about him appearing in the September 2007 issue of the
Atlantic Monthly, written by Matthew Scully [7], a speechwriter who served
with him, portrays Gerson less as St Francis than Tartuffe, less Joan of Arc
than Sammy Glick. "For all of our chief speechwriter's finer qualities, the
firm adherence to factual narrative is not a strong point", writes Scully.
"The artful shaping of narrative and editing out of inconvenient detail was
never confined to the speechwriting. (The phrase pulling a Gerson, as I
recently heard it used around the West Wing, does not refer to graceful
writing.)"
In the article, "Present at the Creation [8]", Scully describes how Gerson
carefully crafted his own image as Bush's voice and conscience, conveniently
airbrushing the other speechwriters out of the picture. Scully recalls being
at a crowded meeting on 13 September 2001, with Bush, at which the president
declared, "We're at war." In the version appearing in the Washington Post,
under the byline of Bob Woodward and two other reporters, "the rest of us
have vanished, and the president declares, 'Mike, we're at war.'"
The White House ticktock story (or detailed, minute-by-minute account), a
favourite of the prestige newspapers, showing their superior access, is
always fraught with manipulation. And the versions that appear are
invariably a tale agreed upon by those selected or volunteering to tell the
tale. Gerson was a master of the genre and the whole Washington press corps
was his keyboard, but especially Bob Woodward [9].
"Woodward's trilogy about the Bush years is a tale of speechwriting glory
that Mike himself could hardly improve upon", writes Scully. "Remember those
powerful and moving addresses the president gave after September 11?
According to Woodward's State of Denial, Mike wrote all of those speeches by
himself ... How do I break the news to Bob Woodward that his high-placed
source wrote not a single one of the lines quoted above, at best a third of
any of the speeches he mentions, and that the National Cathedral address
[10] was half-written before Mike even entered the room?"
Michael Gerson emerged [11] as a perfect hothouse flower of the religious
right and conservative infrastructure. After graduating from Westminster
Christian Academy, he majored in theology at the evangelical Wheaton
College, and was immediately recruited as a ghostwriter for Charles Colson,
the Watergate dirty trickster and felon who had become a religious-right
leader of the Prison Fellowship Ministries. Gerson has called Colson his
mentor, an example of "tremendous personal integrity". Gerson was soon
appointed a "senior policy advisor" at the Heritage Foundation, though
expert in no particular policy, and served as a speechwriter for a
succession of Republicans, from Senator Dan Coats of Indiana to Senator Bob
Dole. After Gerson's brief stint at U.S. News, Karl Rove signed him up for
the presidential campaign of George W Bush. From there, the rest is
mythology.
"The narrative that Mike Gerson presented to the world is a story of
extravagant falsehood", writes Scully. "He has been held up for us in six
years' worth of coddling profiles as the great, inspiring, and idealistic
exception of the Bush White House. In reality, Mike's conduct is just the
most familiar and depressing of Washington stories - a history of
self-seeking and media manipulation that is only more distasteful for being
cast in such lofty terms. There are rewards for such behaviour, and in
Mike's case the Washington establishment has raised him up as one of its
own - a status complete with a columnist's perch at The Washington Post."
A leap of faith
Scully's memoir is unusual in the annals of Washington tell-alls. Typically,
the disillusioned narrator wishes to distance himself from failure, assign
blame to others or expiate his guilt. Scully, however, desperately wants to
claim his proper share of credit for the Bush catastrophe. While he accuses
the devout Gerson [12] of bad faith, he never quite recognises why Gerson's
credit-hogging has seemed so plausible. Whether or not Gerson wrote what he
claimed to have written, the orotund, purple prose that is his style is
completely consistent with Bush's high-flown rhetoric. Phrases like "axis of
evil" mark Bush's language as a torrent of incoherence, arrogance and
fanaticism. But the stupidity of the ideas is no hindrance to the fight over
pride of authorship. Taking credit for the disaster is better than
anonymity, a Washington version of the Hollywood PR truism that there's no
such thing as bad publicity.
The conflict [13] between Matthew Scully and Michael Gerson is a clash
between two cardinal sins: the bearer of envy meets the bearer of false
witness. Scully is transparently envious of the rewards bestowed on Gerson
by the Washington Post Corp - both Post and Newsweek columns - suggesting a
payoff to a source, an unreliable one at that. He neglects the complicating
possibility of an ecumenical blessing bestowed on a suddenly socially
acceptable right-wing evangelical - Colson ghostwriter ascendant as Post
columnist - another bizarre twist in the twilight of the Bush period in
Washington.
But Scully's sua culpa is the Boys' Life [14] version of the Bush
presidency. He can't get over his infatuation with Bush. The worst charge he
levels against Gerson is that his self-promotion "diminishes" Bush's
"achievement". In contrast, Scully presents himself as a paragon of good
faith, the real true believer. "Six years later, with all that has gone
wrong in Iraq, I know one is now supposed to sigh with regret at how
mistaken we all were about Bush in those days, how foolish of us to think
the man had greatness in him ... And yet I think I recognize greatness when
it steps before me, and the sight of George W. Bush in those days left an
impression that has never worn off."
Still mesmerised by his heroic conception of Bush, Scully does not see in
Michael Gerson a representative figure of Bush's presidency. In his
inability to connect his words (whichever they were) to Bush's deeds,
moreover, Scully is little different from Gerson or Rove - or
Bush -promoting a legacy that ignores the realities of their history and
instead takes a leap of faith into myth.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson