Rove: Do as I say, not as I do

By Jennifer J. Foster

From the Hypocrites-R-Us file, we have a story about Karl Rove and his disdain for the ads John McCain and Barack Obama are running against each other.

Rove objects to the ads on the grounds that the statements featured in the ads are “you know, beyond the ‘100 percent truth’ test.“

Pause for laughter.

Rove, as you know unless you’ve been under a rock for the last 20 years, is known for his—shall we say, hard-nosed campaign style. He has become the poster boy for complaints about abject partisanship, and many people credit his tactics with worsening, if not downright exploiting, partisan divides.

Of course, Rove is also a tactical genius, and much of his success is attributable to his voter registration, outreach and turnout strategies.

But for Rove to be making these comments about the tone of the campaign, to claim the moral high ground of campaign discourse in the face of a record like his, well ... it’s just ridiculous.

Obama’s campaign agreed with Rove—

SIDEBAR: Question: How do you know that a story is just plain strange? A. When you have to write something like, “Obama’s campaign agreed with Rove.“ END SIDEBAR

—and predictably seized on his assessment of McCain’s campaign tactics: “In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove—the man who held the previous record—said McCain’s ads have gone too far,“ campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

Remember that as late as last Wednesday, right before his “lipstick on a pig” statement, Obama was hitting Rove in Virginia:

“John McCain says he’s about change too,“ Obama told a crowd here. “So I guess his whole angle is: Watch out, George Bush—except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics, we’re really going to shake things up in Washington.“

Five days ago, the Obama campaign faulted Rove for his contributions to the partisan divide. Now, they apparently trust his judgment.

Good grief.

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: The Obama campaign intends to turn Rove’s comments into a fundraising drive. Just as I was writing this post, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe sent out an e-mail to supporters:

Even Karl Rove had to admit yesterday that the McCain campaign’s lies and negative attacks have gone “too far.“

John McCain is running the most negative and dishonest campaign in modern presidential history. He has demonstrated that he’d rather lose his integrity than lose this election.

It’s right out of the Bush-Rove playbook. Unfortunately, as Karl Rove knows better than anyone, these shameful tactics have worked in the past.

This year, we can’t let that happen.

Our goal is to bring 50,000 new donors into our movement by Friday at midnight.

But—as they say on those late-night infomercials—wait! There’s more!

And if you make your first online donation today, your gift will go twice as far. A previous donor has promised to match every dollar you donate.

No word on the identity of that donor ... or what the campaign would do if funds generated by this e-mail result in that “previous donor” exceeding the $2,500 limit for individual donations.

Did ABC play Palin-Gibson straight?

By Jennifer J. Foster

Most Republicans, and even a few Democrats, don’t think so.

Newsbusters, a project of the conservative Media Research Center, takes an exhaustive look at what ABC edited out of the Palin-Gibson interview. The most important part left out, from my perspective, was this one, which came during Gibson’s questioning of Palin on the Russia-Georgia issue:

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

That statement—“We will not repeat a Cold War”—is every bit as critical as it is unequivocal. John McCain has been accused by more than a few on the left of wanting to start—or of starting on his own—a 21st century reprise of the showdown that marked the latter half of the 20th century. Because of her thin foreign policy credentials, Palin has been painted as someone who will be a willing partner in McCain’s “efforts.“

It’s quite obvious from her statement that if McCain intends to start another Cold War, he’ll be doing it without Sarah Palin.

I mentioned Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers’s column in my previous post, but I wanted to link you directly to it here.

Powers faults Gibson to a point but mostly ABC and its “ham-fisted” editing of the interview for creating a “stupid game” wherein contrived “issues”—like whether Palin believes, by extension of her statements about NATO, that the United States should invade Russia—take precedence over and obscure real issues—like Palin’s positions on censorship and abortion.

This is another excellent column from Powers, and it explains why she’s one of the best and brightest pundits out there.

Powers played it fair.

ABC could learn a thing or two from her.

Palin and the Bush doctrine

By Jennifer J. Foster

We’ve talked about Sarah Palin’s position on the Gravina Island Bridge, better known as the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,“ and how she discussed the project with ABC’s Charlie Gibson in an interview that aired Thursday.

That segment got a good amount of attention, but it paled in comparison to the attention drawn by the segment on the Bush doctrine.

If you missed it, Gibson asked Palin whether she agrees with “the Bush Doctrine.“ Palin shifted in her seat, clasped her hands together and managed, “In what respect, Charlie?“ “What you interpret it to be,“ Gibson responded. “His worldview?“ she said. “The Bush Doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq War,“ Gibson said.

Politicos everywhere sensed a “gotcha” moment coming. (Watch it here.)

But did they get it?

Well, yes ... and no.

Palin “held forth,“ as the clip on YouTube puts it, that she believes “that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation.“

Well, yes ... and no.

Gibson seemed to be correcting her when he said, “The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us.”

Well, yes ... and no.

In his post-Palin-Gibson column on Saturday, it was conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer’s turn to hold forth:

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,“ I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Krauthammer explains:

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration—and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

It’s important to note here that in referring to the phrase he coined, Krauthammer himself uses a lowercase ‘d’ for doctrine. This is evidence to his point: A capital ‘d’ would have made the phrase a proper noun, thus connoting a single definition.

I know, it’s minor, but it’s still important.

Back to Gibson. Ask yourself: When was the last time you heard a television anchor ask a question that wasn’t preceded by at least 15 to 20 seconds of bloviated bluster? After all, they want you to know just how smart they are, so they have to “set the stage” for the answer they think they’re going to get. Gibson followed this convention throughout the course of the interview.

Except for this question.

Why?

Because he wasn’t really after Palin’s position on Bush’s beliefs about preemptory military strikes for self-defense. He just wanted to know if she knew what the phrase “Bush doctrine” meant.

This was why he hesitated to expound on what he meant by the question.

But, even if we do accept Krauthammer’s insistance that there are actually four versions of the Bush doctrine, Gibson does have the fallback position that he clarified his question (even if he was reluctant to do so) by saying that he was referring to Bush’s position as it was “enunciated” in September 2002.

Palin would have really helped herself if she had turned the question back on Gibson. Instead of saying, “In what respect, Charlie?“ She could have said, “To which of the four versions of the doctrine are you referring?,“ and then she could have ticked them off one by one. That would have probably left Gibson scrambling back for his notes—and it would have established that she was better informed on the doctrine(s) than the person asking about it, which is all most viewers were concerned about, anyway.

What does all this mean? It means that Gibson was probably out to “gotcha” Sarah Palin. It also means that Palin could definitely stand to spend some more time on foreign policy ahead of her debate with Joe Biden in a few weeks.

See also:

Part 1 of the Palin interview

Part 2 of the Palin interview

Bloomberg’s writeup of the interview

Bill Sammon comes to Palin’s defense on the Bush doctrine

Pundits’ reviews of Palin’s performance and Gibson’s efforts here and here (Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers’ excellent piece is among those promo’d in the second link)