McCain Mistakes in 2000 Primary

[pbrower2a]

The right course would have been to call Karl Rove's dirty trick exactly what it was by telling the truth about both the child (a situation entirely honorable) and the libeler. That's how to deal with blackmail and libel: attack the lying b@stard or the exploitative beast. Maybe McCain couldn't see it happening because it was without precedent in the collegial world of American politics. Some of us did.

Karl Rove is a political thug even if he looks more like a banker than like a street brawler. As it turned out, Rove's techniques of rule from the back room would not end until 2006 when conditions changed. He tried to rule through a pliant President and Congressional flunkies much as a General Secretary of a Communist Party does in a "socialist" state as a branch of government in his own right. To be sure, Rove is no socialist, but he stands for a crony capitalism that rewards political supporters richly and $crews everyone else.

Karl Rove has set a precedent for dirty dealings in America, and the next time that that happens, it might be by a Democrat and it will be wrong even if it purports to serve a liberal agenda. Here is a good lesson for all Americans: democracy is not so much getting one's way as it is a respect for basic decencies in political life. When thugs take over, then the formalities become a sham. He has shown exactly what I had never understood in George Washington's Farewell Address: the danger of faction in public life. We will always have partisan politics and rancorous debates; we must never allow a Party Boss to become a ruler in practice.