Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Yeah, but I'm sure you know that "spending more time with my family"
is a Washington cliche to the point where it's become pretty much a
joke.  Variants include "...resigned so he could spend more time with
his defense attorneys," etc.
  

    

Not just Washington.  Also common among CEO's and the like.
  

    
Ah.  As a Washingtonian I generally take no notice of what you
peasants in the rest of the world do. ;-)
  

    
I'm a Washingtonian, too.  We're too busy fishing for salmon, hiking
our own Olympian heights, and enjoying the Seahawks to take notice of
what you lobbiticians within the beltway are doing to give us a bad
name!!!
  

    
I'd rather be your kinda Washingtonian, actually.  I don't like big
cities and am not particularly fond of the East Coast in general, but a
man's gotta eat.
  

    
"a man's gotta eat":

Chinook salmon on a bed of Walla Walla Sweet Onions, Dungeness crab
along side fresh Yakima Valley asparagus, washed down with a bottle of 
Mount Baker chardonnay, followed by delicious Wenatchee apple pie, or,
if you prefer, Cascade Farms blackberry pie.  Too much sugar? Rainier
Cherries straight up, then. 

Unfortunately, we don't have Mission Accomplished Humble Pie, Oval
Office Cigars, George the Greater Broccoli, local supply-side jelly
beans, or Billy Beer...

Forgive the topic drift (but Karl Rove does look well fed, back there
in D.C.).
  

    

All I want to know is:  what time is dinner?
  

    
You'll want to replace that Mount Baker chardonnay with the chardonnay
from Forgeron Cellars in Walla Walla, but still. 
  

    
Paul, Dubya has been painted as one of the most puppet-like presidents
in history.  The master puppeteers have identified at different times
as Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove, especially.  Of course, only Cheney
remains of the three.  Rumsfeld and Rove only left after they were
perceived of as having become serious political liabilities.  How much
do you think  George W. Bush has been his own man, and how would you
weigh the level of influence of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, or anyone else,
in being the steerage/brains/Machiavellian force behind Dubya's
decisions/course-of-action as a President.  
  

    
Now THERE's a question.
  

    
That's right!  Could you add to it, Dubya's relationship with and the
influence of his father George HW?
  

    
...but such assessment would involve Freud more than Machiavelli.
  

    
I know that much has been made about Bush being little more than a
puppet, but I have to disagree with that assessment. I think that it
was beneficial for Bush to have someone like Rove, who was -- and still
is -- willing to take the fall for his boss. But it has always been my
feeling, from following Bush and people close to him through the
years, that Bush was the one in control. I think he proved that last
summer when he told Rove it was time for him to go. In the end Rove was
not really Bush's brain; he was what he was -- a political adviser who
could easily been gotten rid of. Ultimately, the credit or (more
likely) criticism of the Bush administration will be placed squarely on
not Rove (and others) but Bush, which is the way it should be.
  

    
Hmmm.  So stupid is as stupid does...


That's a relief, in a perverse, quasi-democratic way.
  

    
Paul--if it's possible to divulge, what projects are you working on now?
What articles or books are coming out in the near future?  Are you done with
Rove as a subject or will you focus on him again at some point?
  

    

I've been loving this book, but the only future one on Rove I would care to
see would be "The Trial of Karl Rove."
  

    
Thank you Paul and Patrick for a wonderful two weeks.  Now it is time for us
to turn our attention to a new topic.  You are all welcome to continue here
for as long as you'd like.
  

    
Paul--thanks for spending some time here discussing Machiavelli's Shadow!
  

    
Paul, the book is really great -- and frightening.  My earlier
question that must've gotten overlooked is how exactly do you go on
with seeing so closely these machinations (especially coming up on this
election and Rove's control of the $250 million war chest?  You and
Seymour Hersh?

The truly most enlightening thing about your book is how many
egregious mistakes and errors Rove has made in his career.  His "evil"
seems to be so much luck.
  

    
He's about as subtle as a coyote, which is to say somewhat so, but not very.
  

    
How people overreact. Ten years ago, I remember the same kind of bile
being poured on the head of James Carville who was to the Clintons what
Rove is - or was - to the Bush administration. Then, Carville was a
gigantic figure whose ominous malevolence tainted every aspect of the
Clinton years or so said commetators on the right; today, he's just a
screw-faced media pundit much in the same way that Rove will
undoubtedly be in a few years time. 
  

    
I don't doubt that Rove will surface in some new context, but he'll
still be reviled as a piece of shit.
  

    
Really? Does the Left still have a hard on for Poindexter and Ollie
North? Or the Right for Carville? Not so much. Time gives perspective.
Thirty years from now your grandkids will say to you; 'But what did Mr.
Rove actually do?'. And you'll say; 'He helped the monster Bush win
his first election and he revealed a brave CIA bureaucrat was, ummm, a
CIA bureaucrat'. And your grandkids will say: 'Oh look, five o'clock.
Well, we gotta go now to beat the traffic'. You'll cry out: 'No! Wait!
Bush is the antichrist!' and then Nurse Ratchet will have to knock you
out with 300 cc of duifluourescipam, and it will all seem about as
important to you then as it does to most of us now.
  

    
Yeah, I still think Ollie North is a blowhard faux patriot asshole,
and Poindexter is a lying slime, and Nixon is a crook -- a dead crook,
but still.  What's your point, or are you just the troll du jour?  
  

    
I think you hit the nail on the head, mark.