Click…Click…Click…Ralph Reed
When the political season finally went into full swing with the early primaries, a figure who is well known in Alabama turned up as a political analyst on CNN. One-time Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee, One-time religious organizer, one-time political operative, one-time partner of Jack Abramoff, one-time candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia and now pundit Ralph Reed was on hand to give political insight into the New Hampshire primary. Some people go to prison and some people find a comfortable seat in a broadcasting booth where they can bring the news to a public primed to forget.
What kind of political analyst would Reed be? Campaign financing is always a popular topic. Reed could give his first-hand insight into how to launder money from illegal enterprises to circumvent election laws and funnel a stream of money through PACS to support political candidates or the concerns of his backers. That would be a lively discussion. He could talk about how to use faith to manipulate the faithful to support issues and candidates while being paid by the very concerns he is vowing to oppose. Although it might not have been as dramatic a yarn as when he played a casino against itself, the artistic purity of his work with Channel One and the Alabama Lottery are a textbook marriage between cynical politics and shady business. And as the night grew longer, around the time when McCain was wrapping up his New Hampshire win, Reed could whip out his old signature ‘they-won’t-know-I’m-there-till-they’re-in-a-body-bag’ quote while he is reminiscing about the old days, like those days when he was being paid by Enron to run negative campaigns for George Bush. Now that’s a political commentator with something to bring to the table! Or there were those heady days when he worked to influence Alabama Christians to urge then Congressman Bob Riley to oppose legislation that would make the sweatshops in the Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal regulations while all the time being paid by Abramoff, who represented the Marianas.
The McCain victory, that night, should have had a faint ring to it while Reed must have been struggling to keep a straight face. McCain was the guy who investigated his partners, Abramoff and Scanlon. And now Reed’s a glib analyst now where was the investigation, where was the grand jury? And just why wasn’t Ralph Reed or ever called to be a witness in McCain’s investigation?
Click…click…click…the Karl Rove show.
Another political operative who honed his skills in Alabama, before moving onto Washington, alit briefly on CSPAN on the way to his place at a network newsdesk. Karl Rove was addressing the state Executive Directors and Party Chairmen at the Republican National Committee’s winter meetings. The man who has been known to choose his friends and associates solely based on party affiliation was delivering a message urging the state party operatives to devise a plan to unify America. Some of it was the usual slanted party rhetoric that both political parties tend to indulge themselves with, like talking about how Obama, as a one-term Senator, does not have the experience to be Commander-in-Chief, when the speaker had just left the administration of the current Commander-in-Chief, who was likewise a one-term governor with virtually no record of prior public service. But his language framing the Democrats as tax and spend liberals who are soft on terrorism and national security is to be expected in the same manner that Democratic strategists likewise define themselves with well-worn party-of-the people rhetoric. But rather remarkably, when Rove was discussing the political vulnerabilities of Hillary Clinton, he referred to “The Clintons’ refusal to release documents that are hidden in that library, and her failure to say let’s get’m out.” And he went on to say that, “This gives the American people a legitimate question about what she is hiding.” Yes it does. It is kind of like the legitimate questions about what Leura Canary is hiding with her and the DOJ’s refusal to release documents relating to the investigation of Don Siegelman; and it is kind of like the legitimate questions about what Karl Rove himself, and other White House officials, are hiding in their refusal to turn over documents requested by Congress, that pertain to the administration’s involvement in the prosecution of Siegelman and Scrushy. It is the failure to say “Let’s get’m out,” that belies the partisan nature of the rhetoric.
Karl Rove’s speech was meant to rally the troops in how to shape the nation into a Republican mold, resurrecting the image of his concept of a Permanent Majority, but I must have missed the part where he tells the party operatives that one of the best tools is to start a whisper campaign that builds into a spurious investigation meant to destroy the life and careers of your most formidable opponents. It works even better if you can link your ultimate prey to a very unpopular local figure. When the opposition is safely carted off to prison, a victory can be declared over liberalism, people can be sworn to silence, documents can be shredded or “lost,” and you can leave the scene, retirng to a state like Texas for instance, and write your memoirs.
And speaking of Texas, back in the Lonestar State, Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht is in trouble for using campaign funds to pay for personal flights. The Honorable Nathan Hecht is connected to the Bush administration in at least two ways. Like George Bush, he was a Karl Rove client, and he was also the defender-in-chief of the nomination of Bush attorney Hariet Meirs to the Supreme Court. Facing ethics charges for the use of his personal time to defend Meirs, a bill was drafted to reimburse him for legal expenses that he had already been compensated for via donations. And now there are allegations that he has been misusing his campaign funds. But where is the indictment? Where is the investigation? Are there officials of the DOJ making copious statements pertaining to Hecht selling out the state of Texas? Although the exact level might be debatable, as it has been hidden in unreleased documents and the minds of recalcitrant individuals, the Alabama investigation was pushed from Washington. It will be interesting to see if the Texas situation, with its ties to high-ranking government officials, is likewise affected in the opposite direction.
Click…click…click…More Rove
It’s SuperTuesday and pundit Reed was apparently not asked to reprise his role as an election night analyst, but new pundit Karl Rove has settled into the color-commentator’s chair on the Fox News Network. His Fox colleagues have a tendency to gush with groupy-like enthusiasm over their excitement at sitting next to Rove. One of them marvels that Rove has scribbled the delegate count on a scrap of paper. But to dazzle broadcasters with feats of the obvious is not why he is here. It’s all about having a genuine Republican Star in their midst, and their fawning accolades sometimes make it easy for Rove to easily outshine his star-struck fellow commentators. For instance, Rove correctly notes that Obama’s main base of support and his biggest wins are in Red states that the Democrats would not win in the general election. But what kind of analyst could Rove really be? He could reminisce about how he refused to accept an election result in a close Alabama Supreme Court race, and how he slugged the battle through the courts for an entire year, until he could get the desired outcome. He could talk about how, in his former job, he had so much influence that he helped pick US Attorneys. How would that be for dazzling? Much better than impressing his fellow commentators with a delegate count. Or what about the time when Rove claimed that his office was bugged just before an election, or he could swap some good stories about John McCain, the big winner of SuperTuesday. “If it wasn’t for me,” he could tell them, “there’s a good chance John McCain wouldn’t be running for President, he would BE the President.” And he could go into how him and Reed savaged McCain in South Carolina, starting a whisper campaign that the Senator was a traitor. And just as all the results were coming in, and when Rove was really getting going with his stories, he might start talking about all those meetings he had with Abramoff before stopping in mid-sentence, staring deadpan into the cameras while his eyes flash with a realization that he is talking to newscasters and he never talks to the press. (“I’m the press? When did that happen?”) Next thing you know there might be an investigation and even an indictment. So instead, he says hopefully, “I have some figures on the delegate counts,” and all the Fox commentators look pleased.
Click…click…click…Michael Mukasey.
At yet another Congressional oversight hearing, the House Judiciary Committee had Attorney General Michael Mukasey visit the House chambers for another question and answer session. His testimony seemed cagey as he has been pulling a Mark McGuire—preferring to look at the future (as in: that Gonzalez guy is gone) while closing the door on the past—an approach that is frustrating when it comes from a baseball player, but a rather jarring spectacle when it is espoused by one of the highest government officials in the land. At the very end of the four hour hearing, with almost the last question he would answer, Congressman Artur Davis asked about the circumstances surrounding the allegations of the political prosecution of the governor of Alabama.
Mukasey didn’t exactly kick the table over, jump up and yell, “What? Our government was involved in a politically motivated prosecution? I’ll get right on it.” And when he was told that sworn testimony had indeed been given to a Congressional inquiry, Mukasey did not exactly say, “As the top enforcer of the laws of this great country, I will not rest until I get to the bottom of this. Give me names, dates and places. If someone’s been wrongly prosecuted and convicted, and if there is any chance that this government was involved, I will do my duty as the United States Attorney General who has sworn under oath to be completely independent of the administration or any outside political pressure.” No, he didn’t exactly say that.
Mukasey did concede that it would be improper for a politician or a member of the administration to inquire or otherwise meddle in a DOJ investigation. And the hearing was over. In his brief response, he also mentioned that he thought it would be improper for him, as a government official, to comment on a case that is under appeal. Did his employees get that memo yet? Numerous DOJ employees, including career prosecutors and political appointments have commented at length on this case that is under appeal. But apparently, and couched within his tepid response, Attorney General Mukasey is selectively conscientious in his approach to his new job.
Click…click…click…TV Guide…click….60 Minutes
And finally, the Siegelman case is ready for its close-up, with a 60 Minutes report scheduled to air on February 16th. It is a long way from the serve, volley and return match being waged in papers like the Tuscaloosa News and the Anniston Star on one side, and the Mobile Press-Register and the Montgomery Advertiser on the other side, to the national broadcast exposure of the 60 Minutes news magazine, on CBS.
From the outset, the far left has portrayed the Siegelman situation as the actions of an out-of-control Gustapo-esque government that has whisked the former governor off to an American gulag, while the right wing has portrayed the matter as the natural end-result of bankrupt liberalism, and the subversive mutterings of the “netroot.” Swinging back to the middle is the CBS program which was once a venerable bulwark of investigative journalism, but after the media has become fragmented by the various cable networks and Internet-spawned new media outlets, the program has become more uneven. Although it still sometimes offers some insightful pieces, it often takes on feel-good stories or contrived controversies imbedded in a format studded with softball questions (people of Alabama will remember that Scrushy was a subject of a Mike Wallace piece just a few days before he was indicted in the HealthSouth case). Nevertheless, the long-awaited 60 Minutes report does swing the Siegelman matter back toward the middle of the road, if perhaps stopping just left of center, but it is unlikely that the program will do much to bring the two poles closer together. However, after all of the channel surfing, the static, the voices, the visuals, the rhetoric, there is at least one thing that should be important to all Americans: A highly irregular trial followed a highly irregular investigation, and two innocent men were wrongfully convicted and sent to prison, in Alabama. Whether screamed by the Left, trumpeted by the Right, or picked up and addressed by 60 Minutes, what happened in Alabama should concern everyone in America and all of America should care about it.
Before they became pundits and long before they became government officials or party operatives, there was a Constitution that was a stop-bar, and which the underpinnings of political discourse would hang onto. What happened in Alabama, from the ardent Siegelman haters to the residual anger over Scrushy’s misguidance of a Fortune 500 company that once promised so much for Alabama, to people all across this country whom might happen to catch the 60 Minutes report and raise an eyebrow because they need to believe—we really need to believe—that our system of government is fair and honest, and it is neither in the throes of the Left’s dark vision of a Gulag nor in the Right’s total-destruction version of politics. Karl Rove might have said it best when he said that if they “don’t get’m out,” then America will have legitimate questions on just what is being hidden.
It is time to change the channel.