Him Spooky

There’s an interesting passage in Todd S. Purdum’s piece in the latest issue of Vanity Fair (Dec., 2006) about top Bush strategist Karl Rove. “From the beginning of his career,” Purdum writes, “Rose used any weapon he could,” showing “an early predilection to play dirty…. When Rove was locked in a disputed election to become national chairman of the College Republicans, Terry Dolan…who would later found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, leaked a tape to the Washington Post in which Rove and another College Republican were heard trading tales about campaign espionage. Eventually, the chairman of the Republican National Committee concluded that Rove had won the election. The chairman at the time was George Herbert Walker Bush.”

…“One of us!”

Dirty tricks; dirty politics. And what might that mean for the mid-term election on Tuesday? Can you believe that we’ve arrived at a moment in our political life when the New York Times runs an editorial (today) with tips for voters about how to spot election malfeasance? And voters are vowing to show up to the polls with video cameras, a la the Rodney King beating?

Whatever happens on Tuesday, the next Congress that is not run by these lockstep Republicans (in 2046? when the nation’s capital has been moved to Boulder, Co., because Washington is under water?) should take upon itself a serious overhaul of the voting system... Or we should. By revolution, if necessary.

An America out of the grip of the Bush administration and their rubberstamp cronies.
Dare we allow ourselves a whiff of the joy?

Of the possibility of troop withdrawal from Iraq?

Of truth instead of lies?

Of a little looking out, as Jimmy Stewart said in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, for the other guy?

Of American values as we the people envision them, and not the elite spooks in the White House, the Pentagon, Incorporated, Skull and Bones and Bohemian Grove?

We shouldn't settle for anything but that.

We can't, and we won't.