Après Rove le Déluge 
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
October 25, 2005



 

Can Bush survive in a post-Rove world?

Not likely.

The Bush persona is mainly the invention of its author, Karl Rove: a careful stitching together of religious and western imagery, of pious moralizing and cowboy “straight-talk”. Originally, Bush was nothing more than a formless glob of clay that ϋber-advisor Rove tenderly sculpted and brought to life. In many ways Bush is nothing more than the political vehicle for the aspirations, ambitions, and objectives of his constituents. He wasn’t chosen as a presidential nominee for his abilities, but for his for his willingness to follow orders and carry out the corporate agenda without question. His utter lack of curiosity about anything beyond the range of his immediate experience has proved to be a real godsend in his new assignment. In fact, Bush may be the perfect candidate: a self-absorbed malingerer who flawlessly reflects the identity of the person whispering through his hidden earpiece.

Rove is the stardust that animates the vacuous executive, the transformer that pumps a steady stream of electricity into the severed presidential cortex. He’s not so much a puppet master as he is an alter ego; a Texas Cyrano creating the illusion of sincerity, warmth and moral conviction where none exist. Simply put, he’s a magician, turning a lumpen mass of protoplasm into a fully operable world leader with moveable parts. Without the wily professor Rove behind the curtain, the Bush façade would quickly dissipate and vaporize into thin air.

The system simply doesn’t work without Rove. It goes beyond the symbiotic relationship between the two; it’s the marriage of mind and muscle. Bush likes to play dress-up, and Rove, who has a keen grasp of American folklore, is forever extracting new, iconic identities from his bag-o-tricks. One day Bush appears as a “Mission Accomplished” action figure in a shiny jumpsuit on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, then he’s hammering man with rolled up sleeves and a contractor’s nail belt, and finally, its basic flannel for the requisite Ronald Reagan chainsaw photo-op. Whatever the occasion, our Betsy McCall president is always at the ready to slip on a costume, coif up the hairpiece, and take center stage. Rove’s job is to ensure that Bush looks presidential whether waltzing with a plastic turkey in Baghdad or gadding about in a Navy flight-jacket surrounded by Marines.

The greatest tribute to Rove is the fact that 38% of the American people still believe that Bush is running the country. This is a remarkable feat, especially since the public relations smokescreen that traditionally shelters Bush from criticism has gotten increasingly threadbare.

In the last few weeks a number of articles have pointed out that Bush is totally outside of the policy making loop in his own administration. Apparently, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) and Cheney’s White House Iraq Group (WHIG) made all of the major decisions related to the upcoming war in Iraq. Bush was either too busy developing a softer look for his scripted video conferences or frolicking in the Crawford outback on his customized mountain bike. Whatever he was doing, his circumscribed role as performer-in-chief has never really been in doubt. He was enlisted to put a smiley-face on vile policies of torture, repression and war, and he has done just that.

But, now, the system is teetering from the threat of indictments. If Rove goes down, the cracks and fissures in the White House parapets will appear fairly quickly. Bush depends on his podgy confidante more than people realize. He’s the anchor that keeps the petulant president from drifting off into a post-alcoholic miasma. Without Rove, the country faces the prospect of an embattled executive left to his own devices, his jittery hands inching ever closer to the Big Red Switch.

Not a pretty picture.

The Bush administration really isn’t built on its high-minded ideology as many seem to believe. That stuff is pure mumbo jumbo. The regime rests entirely on the strengths and talents of a few key people, without whom the whole mechanism would grind to an abrupt standstill. Rove, Rumsfeld and Cheney are the indispensable cogs in the imperial jalopy. If any one of them is carted off to prison, the entire operation will unravel like a ball of yarn.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, and can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.

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Other Articles by Mike Whitney

* Voting in Afghanistan: Warlords, Jihadis, and Iranian Agents
* Saddam's Mock Trial
* Escorting Judy to the Gallows
* Miller’s Confession: The Last Gasp Before the Indictments
* The Iraqi Constitution: A Cynical Cover for Partition
* Can Attacks on Oil Facilities Lead to Peace?
* George Bush and the Four Horsemen
* Bunker Days with Reichsführer George
* Martial Law and the Advent of the Supreme Executive
* The Evil of Torture and the Power of Non-Violence
* Why Not Torture Judith Miller?
* The Occupation of New Orleans
* Brownie's Comic Opera
* Apartheid Justice in America: Krugal vs. Padilla  
* The Impending Cakewalk in Iran
* Farewell to the Democratic PartyBunker Days with Reichsführer George
* Basra: Another Milestone in the War on Terror
* The Inevitable War with Iran
* Let Them Die Or Let Them Go
* Who’s Blowing Up Iraq?
* The Second American Revolution
* Hurricane Hugo at the UN
* Tal Afar: Crackdown in the Sunni Heartland
* John Roberts’ Role in the Guantanamo Hunger Strike
* Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty
* Rodney King in New Orleans
* Rehnquist Paved the Way for the Imperial Presidency
* The New Orleans Looters Are the Bush Progeny
* The Devastating Impact of Hurricane George
* “Transformation”: How Rumsfeld Smashed the National Guard
* The Lords of War
* Robertson’s Fatwah: “A Whole Lotta Smitin’ Goin’ On”
* Turning Cindy Sheehan’s Victory Into Defeat 
* “My Son Died for Nothing”
* "Shoot to Kill": Tony Blair’s First Trophy
* Greenspan’s Role in the Housing Bubble
* Failing in Iraq
* Revving Up World War III
* Pretty Hot in Crawford, Pretty Hot in Hell
* Straight-Shootin’ George Galloway
* “Operation Community Shield”: Comrade Chertoff’s Preemptive Crackdown
* Kristallnacht: What Happens When the Public Says Nothing? 
* Burying Blair: Post-Mortem for the British PM
* “Withdrawal” from Iraq?: Forget About It
* The Globalization of State Terror
* Tom Friedman: Fabricating the Roots of Terror
* Doomsday: The Final Months of the “Housing Bubble”
* John Roberts and the National Security State
* Guantanamo: the Calculus of Human Misery
* Did Greenspan Know About the London Bombings Two Days Before?
* Another Casualty in Rumsfeld’s Information War
* Genesis of an American Gestapo
* Bush's Orgy of Carnage
* Goodbye to Sandra Day O’ Connor . . . and Good Riddance
* The Rumsfeld Solution: “Liberating Iraq, One Journalist at a Time”
* Show Your Independence on the 4th -- Burn a Flag
* "Up in Smoke": Bush Flops in Prime Time
* More Rumsfeld Lies About Insurgent Meetings
* Incinerating Iraqis: The Napalm Cover-Up
* Guantanamo: The New-World Icon
* The Bush Radio Address: More Delusional Blather While Iraq Bleeds
* The Friedman Solution: Reinstate the Draft
* Body Slamming the 4th Amendment
* Operation Desperation: Rumsfeld’s Baghdad Fiasco
* The EU Constitution: Don’t Believe the BS
* Protecting the Plutocrats
* What Was Laura Bush Doing at the Al Aqsa Mosque?
* Free Jose Padilla!
* Alberto Gonzales’ Kristallnacht: Purges for a Safer America
* Tom Friedman: The Imperial Chronicler
* Gods, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw
* A Tentative Strategy for Ending the War
* The Specter of Violence in America
* Free Speech in the Crosshairs
* Why America Needs to be Defeated in Iraq
* More Madness at the Bush News Conference
* Ratzinger’s Plan to Hide the Pedophiles
* Let’s Let Atheists Back into Politics
* Pope Ratzinger: More “Pie-in-the-Sky” for the Struggling Masses
* The Purveyors of Violence: The NY Times in Falluja
* Screw You, Paul Volker!
* Pope TV and the New World Media
* The Economic Tsunami: Sooner Than You Think
* Destroy Abu Ghraib!
* Terri Schiavo and the Battered Judiciary
* Railroading Moussaoui
* The Wolfowitz Appointment: A Red Flag for the Coming Wars
* “Economic Meltdown” -- Sorry, but We’re Toast
* John Bolton and the Road to Tehran
* Clearing the Way for the American Police State
* Challenging the Language of Violence
* Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments
* Crushing the UN for a Stronger America
* Europe to Bush: “Hands Off Iran”?
* The Incredible Shrinking Dollar
* Assassinating Al-Hariri Fits Washington’s Plan
* Washington’s Plan to Foment Civil War in Iraq
* Condi’s Euro-Tour
* Folksy Tom Friedman and New Age Imperialism
* Government Without Consent
* The Desperate State of the Union
* Iraq’s Election Fiasco
* Boarding Up the “Window of Opportunity”
* KGB Chieftain Finds Home at Homeland Security
* Bush’s Grand Plan: Incite Civil War
* Pink Slips at CBS

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