Call it Cynical, But Call it Smart

Ran across this little pop-tart on Hullaballoo, along with a sophisticated analysis of US news viewers. Digby wrote:

"Here's James Moore talking about Karl Rove a few years back: 'He once told a consultant that we interviewed for 'Bush's Brain' that you should run every political campaign as though people are watching television with the sound turned down. And toward that end, you rely heavily on imagery and not very much on substance, knowing that if the President is photographed in a school of minority and ethnic children, and is interested in their future in that particular photo op, that people will trust that image. And they don't go beyond that image to look at his policy, which is signing the 'Leave No Child Behind Act' in a big, high-profile moment with Senator Ted Kennedy, and then gutting the heart out of that bill with the funding that he offers up for it."[Emphasis added.]

Wull, djes, we should.

I'll go even further. We should run every political campaign as though people understand only words of one syllable and couldn't find NYC on a map without Mapquest and a GPS.

Could somebody tell that to Obama?

Folks on the Left are operating in a time warp, a giant, persistent anachronism. We haven't transitioned to the 21st Century.

The notion that the "youth vote" equates to the future of American politics is about to be put to the test in a big way. The choices are: (a) it's correct; and (b) not hardly.

At the moment, I'm going for (b), on the basis of the BS about the cross in the dirt and the percent of Americans who still believe that Saddam had WMD, not to mention the decline of US newspapers and the number of people who think Grand Canyon was created in 6 days.

The anachronism? It's related. We think the majority of voters still read, think, and care. They know better.

Now, do we engage the voters where they live? If we do, is that cynical and exploitative, or is it smart, effective, and fair enough in the circumstances?

Short term, it's smart, effective, and fair enough.

But for how long do we communicate at the "See Dick Run" level (and I do mean "Dick")? And exactly how and when do we grow the public discourse to the next level, which I guess is "High School Musical"?

Dunno. Your turn.

Rove's New Job?

One thing is clear: The Bush Reich surely will not allow its chief propagandist and ring master to go to waste.

Of a piece with Rove’s reported plans to return to Texas to write a book on the George W. Bush administration would certainly be a new post as, er, puppet master, behind-the-scenes "managing editor" of a presidential library cum propaganda complex. If anyone knows which files hold the dirty secrets, it's our boy Karl. You heard it here.

From BushWatch (Thursday, August 9, 2007):

Dr. Benjamin Johnson, a history professor at Southern Methodist University(SMU)in Dallas, where President Bush is proposing to build his $500 million library and neoconservative institute (DeFrank, 2006; Berkowitz, 2007,recently attended the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Several colleagues there reported that Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, has been traveling around the country examining research facilities, discussing how to select Bush Institute fellows, and meeting with library directors (Johnson, 2007a).

According to Dr. Johnson, one well-respected colleague said, "Rove seems to know exactly what the square footage is of the building that will be at SMU and where it will be located on campus." Rove also expressed displeasure that some SMU faculty and United Methodist bishops were protesting the proposed partisan institute (Korosec, 2007; Silva, 2007)over which Bush and company will have total control (Johnson, 2007b). This hands-on involvement of a top-level White House operative like Rove demonstrates the importance of the proposed library and think tank at SMU to Bush insiders.

. . . . To re-write history on the scale Bush needs will necessitate the complete control of a disinformation institute, and if it uses the legitimacy of a respected university and the good name of a major Protestant tradition, all the better (imagine the American Enterprise Institute with a giant cross on the front door, and you get the picture).

Importantly, Rove and friends will be able to continue to conceal the most damaging information about this administration in its bubble using Bush's Executive Order 13233, signed into law shortly after 9/11, which insures [sic] that the president and his heirs are able to deny access in perpetuity to government records they select (Gillman, 2007). (Emphases ours.)