Karl Rove is Full of IT!

As far as political campaigns are concerned, Karl Rove is probably one of the best guys to have in your corner if you are running for some type of office. Let’s face it, if he can make George W. Bush look like the better candidate for two consecutive elections, then the man must know something about running a good campaign. However, as an aspiring bull-shitter myself (one who works at the act of persuasion), I feel it is my responsibility to call out Karl Rove on a few important issues that he failed to acknowledge in a speech/Q&A session at Wilkes University, April 15 2009. And since I was dealing with the brains behind former President Bush’s operations, I hoped that I could finally get some answers to these important questions regarding the conspiracies of Bush/Cheney 00’-08.’

Unfortunately, I have to admit that my hopes were crushed when I said this man was the “brains” behind Bush’s operations. Rove’s intelligence applied well to his theories concerning political campaigns and advising, but it failed dramatically when it came time for him to speak of matters outside the discipline. For example, when asked by a man in the audience if he had seen the movie which was meant to document former President Bush’s life before, during, and after the White House known as “W,” he answered “no.” After making what he thought was a funny remark about the movie industry he then proceeded to ramble on once again thinking he was funny about how the character the producers picked the to play him was a bad pick because according to Rove, “everybody knows I am taller than Cheney,” implying that Toby Jones, the character picked to play him, represented him negatively. He was also able to talk about Jones’ role in “W” to a small extent which made me along with several of my colleagues agree that Rove definitely saw the movie.

Given this small example of how Karl Rove displayed brainless rhetoric I would like to now assert that Toby Jones was a good pick to represent Rove.

Jones is small, similar to Rove’s insight to the working class families of America which was limited. During his Q&A session, he made what he probably thought was a defense of the conservative method of the tax system in America. During his justification for Bush’s tax-cuts we saw from the White House 00’-08,’ he made sure to acknowledge all of those who he felt deserved these passes: business owners, those who are self-employed (like him), big companies. He failed to acknowledge the people who are responsible for keeping all the big corporations of this country alive, the people who work them! His failure to acknowledge the working (middle-lower) class American leads me to believe he was responsible for Bush’s tax-cuts for the highest 1% annual income bracket of Americans.

Rove also presented financial information concerning how much more Democrats spent on their campaigns compared to George W. Bush when he ran twice. The insignificance of this figure only further solidified Toby Jones as a better representation of Rove, in that I could clearly see him on my shoulder with a pitchfork trying to convince me that his opinion is correct.

Karl Rove may have significant contributions readily available for the field of communications, but as far as contributing to the bettering of America through whatever method he chooses goes –either through literature or The Wall Street Journal-, I hope that he realizes how much he does not know about America. I got the impression that Rove thinks that he knows how America should run and consequently also the world. Unfortunately, based on my hour of listening to him speak of his deeds I realized that men like him lead large countries into what history refers to as “dark ages” and us few who have been hegemoniously pushed to the side by his ideas know very well that he was responsible for a lot of the “bad” that came from the Bush administration: 9/11, Iraq, debt.

Even if Karl Rove called upon me during the Q&A session, there is no guarantee that he would have answered me. But I hope it would have at the very least, let him know that there are people out there who know that he is a bum and should stop using political campaign knowledge to try and tell people how to rule the country.

David Lewis
Wilkes University 11'