Rove-ing thoughts

Anyone remember a book called "Fortunate Son"? Odds are that most of you won't. It was a book about Bush written by J. H. Hatfield and released during the early part of the presidential campaign in 1999. It was exhaustively researched and, among other things, revealed that Dubya used to be a cokehead. Given this and other details which it included, it had the potential to be a much more explosive book than this "Unfit for Command" bullshit that's authored by a bunch of ignoramuses who still think that we could have won the Vietnam War if it wasn't for those goddamn protesters.

So if books like "Unfit for Command" can receive oddles of press, how come "Fortunate Son" never made a dent in the prestige surrounding our selected leader? Because the author had one fault: Hatfield was a convicted criminal who had served his time.

You may be wondering, "What does that matter?" Honestly, it doesn't; an author should be judged based on the body of their work, not mistakes they have made in the past. But this is all the information needed by the Bush campaign (ie: Karl Rove) to discredit him. They obviously knew when the book was coming out, and just as it was released and started to gain steam in the press, the Bush campaign discredited the book by saying that the author was a convicted felon.

That's dirty politics, which is something that I've come to expect from the Bush campaign and Karl Rove. I've mentioned before that Rove is a political genius, and I honestly mean it. You have to respect the guy because he knows how to get candidates to win. This is the man who, in his early days, would waltz into a democratic candidates office, swipe a bunch of the candidates official letterhead, and send out embarrassing letters. Rove always thinks of a way to win, and you have to admit, he has a pretty good track record.

This is why I think Rove's fingerprints are all over the events of last week. The big story, that's been waiting to break for months while the mainstream media ignored it, is Ben Barnes coming out and admitting that he gave Bush special treatment that allowed him to become a pilot in the Natioanal Guard, and thus avoid getting drafted and shipped off to Vietnam. Barnes was the Lt. Governor of Texas in 1968, and when the favor to get Bush into the National Guard was called in, it was Barnes who took the call. He's admitting this, and quite honestly, this should be a huge story. What's worse, though, is that he could have revealed this information in 1994. Bush was making his first run for governor of Texas, and obviously, he wanted to keep Barnes story under wraps. At the time, Barnes represented a (RI based) corporation called GTech who were about to lose their contract to run the Texas state lottery. Bush agreed to give GTech a contract in return for Barnes keeping his mouth shut about Bush's past. GTech then gave Barnes $23 million for his work.

That's a story of corruption which has the potential to sink the Bush campaign, and it was on the cusp of making it into the mainstream press. So what happened instead? These memos turn up on 60 Minutes which are possibily forgeries, and everyone is talking about them.

The memos aren't the story; in fact, they don't even discuss what happened between Bush and Barnes. And for all we know, they could be fakes and CBS was duped. But if they were duped, then who's actually responsibile for the memos?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is just another Karl Rove prank. This fits his MO, and he's effectively wiped the Barnes story off all the potential front pages it could have graced. In the process, he's also tarnished the credibilty of CBS News, and of any story discussing Bush's dubious National Guard "service" record.

I don't suppose we'll ever find out if I'm correct, but the fact of the matter is that arguments over these memos have become the story. Even the left wing blogs and media watchdogs are gettting into it. Unfortunately, any further discussion of these memos only plays into the hands of those who want to keep the real story out of the limelight, and it seems like even the left wing bloggers have been duped.