Bush's Brain Tumor

Big ups to Donald Trump for going on national television yesterday (Friday) and telling it like it is. The Donald was in great form, on Wolf Blitzer on CNN, talking straight with that spoiled little boy pout of his in a way that I was suddenly finding rather adorable. He called the war in Iraq a “catastrophe,” a “disaster"; said everything coming out of the Bush administration was “a lie"; described Condoleeza Rice as "a nice woman who flies around the world taking meetings and getting photographed sitting at 45 degree angles” but ultimately “never makes a deal. People all over the world want to make deals!”

“People who never had a problem with us before, they hate us," Trump said. "Even in England they hate us!” And can you blame them? Because of this president—for in the end who else is to blame?—Iraq will go up in flames, no matter what we do, no matter how long we stay. But how to get out? asked Blitzer, singing the media's lament. I’ll tell you how, said Trump, New Yorker, “Declare victory and leave.”

It was refreshing to see someone of The Donald's brand status saying what’s on everyone’s minds, uncensored by whatever reason there is for anyone to censor him or herself now, when the stakes are so high. Straight talk is quintessentially American, and hearing it spoken always has the same effect as seeing the sun rise.

When someone like Trump, a raging capitalist out of Sinclair Lewis (who I've always found to be a very nice guy), is calling this president and this war a sham, then the jig really is up; it's time to run the crooks out of town. Congress should take note. There’s no “wiggle-room” here: they are in fact a disaster, and a lot of them should be fired ("You’re fired!” as the Donald would say), if not indicted.

Take Rove. The last week in the news was taken up with a couple more Rovian dirty tricks gone awry: the Valerie Plame scandal and now the Alberto Gonzalez scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys. At the heart of both affairs is Karl Rove, a man who would make Machiavelli giggle with admiration.

Testifying on Capitol Hill, Valerie Plame reminded a panel of Democrats and Republicans that Rove "clearly was involved" in an orchestrated effort to leak her covert identity as a CIA agent. "Karl Rove clearly was involved in the leaking of my name and he still carries a security clearance to this day, despite the president's words to the contrary that he would immediately dismiss anyone who had anything to do with it," she said.

Meanwhile, emails surfaced linking Rove to the politically motivated firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. “The latest e-mails between White House and Justice Department officials show that Rove inquired in early January 2005 about firing U.S. attorneys” who “wouldn’t play ball,” said the A.P.

The Republicans seem to regard Rove as a wizard, a kind of right-wing Rasputin; if so, then how come they lost the Congress, are losing the war, and most people (including even Donald Trump) think the entire administration is a disaster? How long are they going to put up with this guy?

Did you ever see that picture of Rove when he was in high school? Ouch. I spent a lot of time around high school students at one point in my career, and the ones that looked like Rove did usually didn’t have it so good. The pressures of extreme geekdom had the unfortunate effect of turning some into the worst kind of mean-spirited a-holes, forever bent on exacting the revenge of the nerds.

Rove's high school experience must have been painful, poor guy, because he seems hell-bent on exacting this revenge not only on the American voter, but the entire world, if you factor in his engineering of the build-up to the Iraq war. He lives on spin. Nothing, including the truth, ever better get in his way. Scruples, ethics, the law—bah!, Rove seems to say. In this sense, he's the perfect symbol of our times, sadly. He and Britney Spears could replace the bald eagle on American money...

He'll be in full spin mode now that the spotlight is on his latest indiscretions and some in Congress are calling for his head, demanding he be hauled in to testify before Congress. Let's see how he'll try and wiggle out of that one. Getting Rove in the hot seat will be about as easy as getting a bull to drink a cup of tea.

For background on how he fights political blood sport, check out “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” by James Moore and Wayne Slater, bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.( There’s a documentary of the same name available on Netflix and in video stores. See also www.bushbrain.com.) Check out Rove's career as a fixer of elections back in Texas, all before he met his man-crush, George W. Bush.

"They were complimentary figures, Bush and Rove, each offering elements the other lacked," says the book. "This man could be president, Rove concluded early on... 'Bush is the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with,' he told a reporter."

Beauty and the Geek; it's been a terribly sad tale, especially for us.