Terry Cowgill

The Rovian Effect

January 26, 2008 on 10:55 pm | In Education, Main, State |

Update 4:30 p.m. Monday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan has now told the school Rove has pulled out. Guess Ed’s Courant op-ed didn’t change many minds.
Update 8:30 a.m. Sunday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan makes a case for Rove in this morning’s Courant.

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I’m always amused when I hear people (mostly Democrats) moan and complain about what an awful mean person Karl Rove is and how he’s one of the main reasons that decent working people everywhere were talked out of voting their own economic self-interests and into putting greedy Republicans in office.

Since Rove left the White House last year, he has continued to make his presence felt. Now he has been invited to speak at Choate Rosemary Hall, the toney, old-money prep school downstate in Wallingford, Conn.

Evidently, a large number of Choate’s 836 students has risen up in protest that the school’s board of trustees has invited Rove to be this year’s commencement speaker. Students have used words like “heinous” and “evil” to describe the man widely thought to be “Bush’s Brain.”

They cite his advocacy for the Iraq war and his role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as examples of his perfidy. Some students have suggested Stephen Colbert as a possible replacement. That tells you all you need to know about the state of popular iconography on the 118-year-old campus — and indeed in much of the nation.

Say what you want about Rove, but he is a serious person (and one of the premier political minds of our generation). Colbert is not. He is a gifted satirist with a rapier wit, but he is not Karl Rove (or Karl Marx, for that matter).

I applaud the disgruntled Choate students for having the guts to speak out and register their disapproval, but you’d have to wonder what their reaction would be if some clever and equally divisive Democratic strategist (say, Bob Shrum) had been invited to give the commencement speech at the alma mater of John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson. I guess then it would be the Choate Young Republicans using words like “heinous” and “evil.”

Which brings me to another point. I really think that, for all their pious whining about Rove’s insidious tactics, Democrats are merely jealous of his success. Imagine if the Dems had someone as talented as Rove on their side. Wait … they already do. And he’s an ex-president.

It doesn’t surprise Republicans at all, but Bill and Hillary are proving as deft as Rove at using wedge issues, half-truths, lies and distortions to divide the electorate. To their credit, some Democrats, particularly Obama supporters, are recoiling in revulsion. They are wondering whether — at least in some measure — the Republicans were right about the Clintons.

I don’t have any doubt that if they desperately needed to counterpunch an enemy, the Clintons would reveal the identity of a CIA agent or worse. Heck, they might even bomb an aspirin factory in Africa to deflect attention from a personal scandal. Oh sorry, Bill already did that …

But if Hillary becomes the nominee and Bill stays in attack mode in the general election against McCain or Mitt, then I suspect many of those Rove-haters will be glad they have Bill on their side. And I have a hunch they’ll stop complaining about him.

P.S. Old friend Rick Green of The Courant has just the right idea in his column of yesterday. If Rove gets the heave-ho at Choate, then consider Johnny Rowland as a commencement speaker. He’ll be right next door in Waterbury, he has lots of time on his hands and he’s looking to redeem himself. That’s Johnny — a redeemer, not a divider …