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.

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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.
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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.

COMPETITION -- ME AGAINST THE WORLD -- ME, IN THE WORLD?

THIS IS NOT JUST HUMOROUS,
IT IS CHALLENGING

Thank you, Doug Savage.  This is a very demanding thought.  The "thought" of competition came to me this morning while listening to the story of how the sons of Jacob had to swallow their pride and their guilt since they had decided to throw themselves at the feet and the mercy of their brother Joseph.  He, whom they had nearly killed, but subsequently saved by selling him to some Egyptian merchants.  He, in turn, saved his whole family from sure death by starvation by using the high position of power and influence that he had attained in Pharaoh's court.  I had to think that he had to be one tough competitor to be a lowly stranger in the land of the highly civilized and rise to a position of authority and power in the capitol. I admire people like that.  I admire people who are starving, yet go to New York to jump-start a career.  It's the thing to do for certain people.  You know, "If you make it here you can make it anywhere."
I remembered Joseph, of course.  I fairly wept when I heard the reader declare the forgiveness with which Joseph covered his brothers.  It got even more emotional when he had them swear an oath that when his prophecy that they would someday be liberated, came to its realization, they were to bring his bones back to the Promised Land so that he could be buried by his ancestor, Abraham.  It is powerful when someone who has won it all doesn't forget where he/she came from.  
I was also thinking of the time when, at the very front edge of my change of careers I was talking to an older friend of mine about my career plans.  I said that I was not really afraid about being jobless for very long since I have a master's degree and speak, read and write four of the popular languages of California.  He was not impressed.  He prophesied that I would soon find out that the world is populated with people with more education, better focused education and who speak read and write seven languages and who have five certificates to prove their value to the world.  The truth of his words was soon slamming head-on into my life.  What a lesson!
I did OK, but I never forgot that prophecy.  How could I forget?  I had to confront its existence in fact, every single day.  
It took a long time, but along the way I discovered that I would win some and loose some, not simply based on cold, hard reality, but helped along by that other little respected, but highly effective reality, politics.  I hate them.  But I also like to eat.  Slowly but surely I came to realize that as difficult as it is, getting into league with the competition can contribute the key to the answer to tomorrow's dilemma.  I didn't learn that in the vast ocean of me vs them, all 5 billion of them.  It was more me, side by side with the strict few immediately below and immediately above.  I learned this from observing the behavior of lawyers in the courtroom, and in the "courtyard" so to speak.  In the courtroom they are locked in "deadly battle," yet they are civil to one another once they cross the threshold and go to lunch.  Go back to the cartoon by Doug Savage and think about it a little bit more.  The lawyers know something that we don't always know and appreciate.  They know that the key to their winning the argument is perhaps to be more clearly revealed to them through the behavior of their direct opponent than through the efforts of their very own labor, both individual and corporate.  This is an extremely counter-intuitive conviction that I have about life.  This is a conviction that I have developed because I came to this conviction by going back to my friend Karl Marx and his philosophy of material dialectics.  It is in the fruit of the tension between the negative and the positive that new manifestations of the truth are born.  The courtroom is the perfect laboratory for this exercise.  I saw it on two occasions from the jury box and at least four other times in the deposition room when I sparred face to face with the claimants' attorneys for hours on end.  There were two of those.  One who taught me how not to be a human being and the other taught me some of the positive lessons illustrated above.
I leave you now with one of my favorite sayings.  It does not come from anyone famous, but from a fondly remembered fiery ice hockey opponent against whom I enjoyed "playing." He used to say, "Competition is good for the soul."  I agree and I respect his insight. I did not cry at his funeral, and he, naturally, will not cry at mine.
...neither should you.