FORBIDDEN TOPIC -- KARL ROVE, A FASCINATING GUY

I am writing this even though it has not totally blossomed into full flower.  I am writing it in a snit of pique over the person for whom I voted back in 2008.  I started out sure that I would not vote for him.  I was angry that he voted for the right of large communications companies to eavesdrop on American citizens.  But then something happened that was worse than that.  If you click here you can see a long list of reasons why I did not vote for the other guy.  Even though his choice for V.P. is near the end, it was the straw that broke my camel's back.
So, I went the other way.  That hasn't turned out so well either.  Keep your eye on the picture, because I am getting there.

=====+++++=====+++++=====
I have never voted for a Bush, nor a shrub.  I have voted for Republicans along the way and I have voted for Democrats along the same way.  I don't adhere to the leanings and the philosophies of political parties.  I strive to vote for the person who seems to offer the best opportunity for the country to experience good governance.  In my lifetime, that hasn't worked very well either. :-(  
I do have one thing to say:  I learned a lot from Karl Rove.  
Rover is a monster, in a rather good sense.  He is a bulldozer.  He is someone who conceives of governance as a fight.  Not a dialectic, like Karl Marx.  No.  For Rove, getting stuff done in politics is dependent on how willing the leader is to win and take no prisoners.  Karl Rove has as his first principle of governing that the leader <always> puts something on the table that the rest of the personnel have to spend time knocking down from a defensive posture.  The corollary is that you don't fight anything with questions.  You make statements, give direction, give orders and never, never make a "U" turn.  If the other side puts up a marker or two despite everything, you fill the documents with marginal conditioning statements that effectively water down the other side's "victory."
The strategy is that the leader always makes the other side respond to propositions that demand action.  The only acceptable answer to the demand is a proposal of how to make it work.   The leader never accepts anything less than a well constructed response.  If it not forthcoming, then the leader commands that the initial position be actuated and made real.  In Rove's world, the leader is always pushing the other side to produce something that will make the leader successful.  
Morality is not a driving force to Karl Rove.  Human kindness is not in his field of acceptable virtues.  The only thing that is important is that the leader wins, enriches himself/herself with the spoils and slays and burns the other side.  In Karl Rove's life the best thing that happened to him was GW Bush.  GW was no match for Karl.  So we got what we got.  An education in how to govern.  An education in how one man thinks that leadership should be practiced.
                      *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
Barack Obama is a lot of things.  Barack Obama makes me think of his namesake in the Bible.  The Bible Barak is sent to battle by the woman judge Deborah and she assures him that God will give him the victory against the attacking Persian, Sisera.  His answer to her is, "Yes, I certainly will go.  But you have to come with me." [Judges, chapter 4]  He's a wimp and she knows it.  She then informs him that she is surely going.  That the victory will remain assured but that the glory for it will go to a woman.  Shades of Karl, right?
Our Barack is a lot of things, and like the guy in the Bible, including being a wimp.    


This thought came to me several times over the last few months.  It is very interesting to me how a person can go through so many hoops in the vetting process that is a presidential campaign and still come up short.  I am old enough to remember FDR and HST.  To use an expression from Ronald Reagan, <Barack, you're no Truman.>  As it turns out, it's looking to me that if a simple guy like me living in a back-water town in Southern California can learn from Karl Rove, then, a Harvard graduate should be able to incorporate at least some of Karl's philosophy into his life.  Use it against the other side.  Fight back.  Make them back-pedal.  Norquist?  The guy isn't even in the government.  Make his disciples suffer.  Twist their arms into knots.  Play games with their brains.  Barack is making it too easy for the Republicans to assure themselves of the White House in 2012.  Good for him that he will have a pension and that his wife is a lawyer.  They'll get by.  The worst luck they could have is to fall into one of the higher tax brackets reserved for the middle class.