On ABC’s This Week today, host George Stephanopoulos introduced Karl Rove as “President Bush’s former deputy chief of staff and political strategist, an informal adviser to John McCain’s campaign.” But Rove immediately objected to this characterization, saying “I wouldn’t even go that far, informal adviser, no way.”
Stephanopoulos pressed Rove on his relationship:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you pass on information to them, you give them advice.
ROVE: Chit-chat.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Chit-chat, ok. Well I think that that justifies, that that qualifies as informal, but let’s move on.
Watch it:
This isn’t the first time Rove has dismissed his ties to the McCain campaign as just “chit-chat.” But, as ThinkProgress has noted, his influence on the campaign is hard to deny:
[base ']Äì Rove[base ']Äôs consulting firm has been disseminating 2008 electoral map projections to influential media outlets and party operatives. In late March, McCain media advisor Mark McKinnon participated in a public conversation about the campaign with former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd. During the talk, McKinnon displayed maps analyzing the states and their electoral votes; the maps bore the header [base ']ÄúKarl Rove & Co.[base ']Äù
[base ']Äì At the beginning of April, McCain embarked on a biography tour to introduce himself to the public, which may have been Rove[base ']Äôs idea. In an April 4 blog post, the Atlantic[base ']Äôs Marc Ambinder noted that Rove had laid out the idea for such a tour during a Feb. 20 appearance at the University of Pennsylvania. Rove proceeded to list the very locations that McCain would eventually visit in April. (Although, McCain actually spoke in Prescott, AZ, rather than Rove[base ']Äôs suggested Sedona, AZ.)
[base ']Äì On April 22, while doing on-air coverage of the Pennsylvania primary for Fox News, Rove let slip that he [base ']Äúsaw Senator McCain recently at a private gathering[base ']Äù where the general election campaign was discussed.
By correctly identifying Rove as an informal McCain adviser, Stephanopoulos is making an appropriate disclosure that Rove’s part-time employer, Fox News, has thus far been unwilling to do. In the 110 days that Rove has been a Fox News contributor, the network has not once identified Rove’s ties to the campaign, despite the ample evidence of an active relationship.
Former Bush chief strategist Karl Rove deliberately declined to deny his involvement in the controversial prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Alabama Governor whose arrest on grounds of corruption appeared politically motivated.
In an at times dismissive interview with ABC's "This Week" Rove said that he would not respond to a subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee imploring his testimony in the Siegelman case. Asked if he had ever made contact with the Justice Department, the man known as Bush's brain said:
"I read about -- I'm going to simply say what I've said before, which is I found out about Don Siegelman's investigation and indictment by reading it in the newspaper."
"But that's not a denial," said the host George Stephanopoulos.
"I've -- you know, I read - I heard about it, read about it, learned about it for the first time by reading about it in the newspaper," Rove replied.
Siegelman was sentenced to more than seven years in prison in 2006 in lieu of a bribery conviction. But his case had heavy hints of political motivation. Recently, a Republican campaign volunteer issued sworn testimony that she overheard a phone conversation suggesting Rove was linked to his case.
Rove's refusal to explicitly deny an involvement in the Siegelman affair was not his only newsworthy moment Sunday. Earlier in the interview, he denied that he was serving as an "informal adviser" to Sen. John McCain, saying, simply, that he and the candidate exchanged "chit chat."
Later, he was asked to explain why his vision for an "endurable" Republican majority - a political game plan that he helped put in place following George Bush's election in 2000 - had sputtered so miserably. Acknowledging that the GOP was "in a bad place today," Rove nevertheless refused to bear any burden for the party's woes, chalking it up to historical cycles and an overeager press hell bent on ginning up scandal.
"Let's go back to 2006 for just a minute since this was your jumping off point. Remember, this is an average off-year election. If you look at the second midterm elections of presidents, the White House party loses an average of 29 seats in the house and five seats in the senate. We lost 30 in the house and six in the senate. And we lost them by awful slim numbers. Out of over 80 million votes cast in U.S. house races the Republicans... lost by 85,000 votes. We lost control of the Senate by 3,562 votes in Montana. Now, we lost. I don't disagree, we lost. But let's put it in proper context. This was a very narrow defeat. In fact, if you look at it the Democrats were very smart. They ran culturally conservative candidates and accentuated one issue for the house. Scandals... The war, if you take a look at people who voted Republican in '04 who voted Democrat in '06 for congress, the number one issue was scandals."
"You're just not going to look backward, are you?" asked a somewhat flummoxed Stephanopoulos
"Well, look, elections are about the future," Rove replied. "And the answer -- the question -- the answer to your question is what do you do in order to put yourself in a better place in and the way you put yourself in a better place is to talk about the things that got you there in the first place."
Is there a better time to drop a gigantic campaign gaffe than on a Friday before the first holiday weekend of summer? No — but if it's really big, it won't matter. Such was the case with Hillary Clinton's bewildering statement yesterday Friday to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader expressing confusion at calls for her to leave the race, since primary fights had stretched into June before:
"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."
The statement invoking Kennedy's assassination touched a nerve when it was picked up by the New York Post and then blared across the Drudge Report, understood to invoke the spectre of another potential assassination in this campaign. Considering that fears for the safety of Barack Obama have been circulating among black supporters for some time, and that threats have reportedly been received, the statement was widely held to have been a reference to him, conscious or unconscious on Clinton's part.
As political sites started buzzing and cablers went nuts, the Clinton campaign issued a statement from the one person who ought to have been able to quell the furor: Robert Kennedy Jr..
"It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June. I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband's 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June. I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense."
You know the rest: It did not quell the furor, nor did a statement by Obama supporter Dick Durbin asserting confidence that "the last thing in the world she'd ever want is to wish misfortune on anybody....[it was] a careless remark, and we'll leave it at that." The tabloids plastered it across their front pages (NY Post: "She Said What?";The NYDaily News: "Hil's Killer Gaffe"; Newsday: "What The Hill?"). Keith Olbermann dedicated yet another agitated Special Comment to the matter. There was outrage, scorn, mockery, and even pity. Oh, and she also got the facts wrong re: her husband. It was another very bad day in the Clinton campaign.
So: Is all the furor worth it? Answer: Yes. On a number of points. First and foremost, it was a boneheaded thing to day — at any time, but particularly now. Even the people who assume she is pushing some sort of secret wish-fulfillment agenda are scratching their heads as to why she'd actually say it that way. Especially after a long campaign of having her gaffes hyper-amplified at every turn (remember 60 Minutes?) She definitely wasn't going to squeak this one by. But also, she already had her chance to make a bizarro assassination-as-part-of-the-process comment back when she pointed out that JFK hadn't passed civil rights legislation, LBJ had. The same reaction bubbled up then, but more muted (it was early, it was the first time) — between now and then we've had the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's death, and, more recently, the sad news about Ted Kennedy's health reopening this national sadness. All which underscores the fact that it was an absolutely moronic thing to say — and if it was calculated, then it was even worse.
By now many outlets are pointing out that Clinton has made similar comments before — to Time managing editor Rick Stengel on March 6th (almost to the word), as well as her JFK/LBJ comment back in January. The lack of response may have lulled her into thinking the analogy would fly; alas, all it takes for something like this to flare into a major issue is for someone to notice. When someone finally does, watch out — even on a holiday weekend.
NB: For a great summation of how the remark took hold and why, exactly, the New York Post broke the story far away from the traveling campaign press gaggle in Sioux Falls, see the WSJ's 'Washington Wire' here: "The fact that it did become big news is illustrative of journalistic competition in the Internet age. The entire pack of reporters sent to watch Clinton's every move had somehow gotten beat, and forced into following a New York Post reporter who was nowhere near the campaign, but who, apparently, had a much-better Internet connection."
Hillary Clinton: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."
What a remarkably wrong-headed paragraph. The formerly inevitable Clinton got into obvious trouble for her assassination comment. (And is now trying desperately to spin her way out. Lotsa luck.) But the sentence before it is totally wrong as well, as I can tell you that the Clintons knew that they would have no trouble in the 1992 California primary.
In May 1992, I passed on a message to Bill Clinton's national campaign chairman, Los Angeles attorney Mickey Kantor, who later held two Cabinet posts in the Clinton Administration. The message? That Jerry Brown, the former California governor who emerged as Clinton's most persistent opponent, would run no TV ads in the California primary and would pull back from the sharp attacks he'd been leveling on the frontrunner.
The primary was not "in the middle of June," as Hillary said in the first part of her gross misstatement about it. It was on the first Tuesday in June, as it had been for decades to that point, on June 2nd. Clinton was way ahead in the race. There was no suspense about him getting the nomination. And Brown's decision not to run TV ads in California -- he had plenty of money for that -- and to refrain from the harsh attacks that had marked his campaign to that point made it very clear that the fight was over.
Brown had made plenty of trouble for Clinton, coming out of the pack to end up as the rather distant runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination. Running against political corruption, the former two-term governor of California won several big primary and caucus victories over Clinton. Accepting no contribution over $100, in this pre-Internet campaign Brown used an earlier form of interactive technology and funded his run with an 800 number, mentioning the number so often that then NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, a family friend, tried to cut him off during a TV appearance.
Brown's surge against Clinton halted after a fake drug scandal broke on ABC. There was nothing actually there -- one key source who appeared on Nightline later admitted that the Brown fundraiser he dramatically said he'd attended where drug-taking took place was a big Eagles concert in the 1970s where some fans smoked marijuana -- but the information provided to the network was packaged cleverly enough to produce a lot of short-term smoke. As it were. Funny how such things happen not infrequently around Bill and Hill's campaigns.
With Brown deciding to run no TV ads, and pulling back from his sharp attacks on Clinton, the way was made absolutely clear for Bill Clinton to finish first in the California primary and begin consolidating his role as the nominee of the Democratic Party.
The night of the California primary, I stayed at the Hollywood Hills home of Brown's sister, Kathleen Brown, then the California state treasurer, and her husband, former CBS News president Van Gordon Sauter. Jerry Brown stayed there, too.
Distressingly early on the morning after the California primary, there was a knock on my door. Jerry Brown rushed into the room, reporting that somebody had called for me. He was much more interested, naturally, in talking about his campaign than in delivering a phone message. I'm not sure I ever found out who had called.
He was in very good spirits. Primary day had gone as he planned, as he piled up more delegates to make a showing at the convention in New York. And Clinton allies like then Democratic national chairman Ron Brown could no longer accuse him of trying to embarrass Clinton as the primary season concluded.
I told Brown that Warren Beatty had called asking for his number. Beatty wanted to play an intermediary role in working out more of a peace agreement between the Clinton and Brown camps.
That never did get worked out, as the Clintons deeply resented Brown for being the first political figure to attack them on what later became known as Whitewater. And his gibes about Clinton golfing with fat cats -- in particular, Hillary's law partner, Webster Hubbell -- as preparations were made for the Clinton-approved execution of a brain-damaged black man during a bad patch in his presidential campaign particularly stung the future first lady.
Now Brown is the very popular attorney general of California, using his office to aggressively pursue remedies to climate change.
And Hillary Clinton? As her campaign winds down, reduced to making bizarre references to political assassination and pretending that she doesn't know any of what you have just read.
Jerry Brown, incidentally, who won a 19-point landslide election as California attorney general in 2006 -- he ran many millions of dollars worth of TV ads in that race -- met with Bill and Hillary Clinton and with Barack Obama early in this campaign cycle. Pondering a return to the governorship in 2010, he is neutral in the race.
On Memorial Day weekend, yet another American family is mourning the death of son who survived the war in Iraq -- only to fall victim at home from post traumatic shock disorder.
The family lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Marine was Chad Oligschlaeger, age 21, who committed suicide this week at the Twenty Nine Palms base in California.
While the cause of his death is still being investigated, family members say he was taking eight different types of medications to deal with post traumatic stress disorder after serving two tours in Iraq.
I've been chronicling these stories for nearly five years, and the surge in such reports in recent weeks is truly troubling.
Byron Smith, Oligschlaeger's uncle, told a local TV outlet, "the first tour he came back and he asked for help, and they sent him back over there. I guess that was their idea of help. He did what a marine does he went over there."
His father, Eric, said, "The second tour ... I don't think he was ready to go back. I think he was fighting it. I think he was afraid to go back."
"We sent these kids over there, we're putting them through things that we'll never see in our lifetimes. Things we see in the movies that are not real, it's real to them," said Christine Judan, a family friend of the Oligschlaegers.
Also reported yesterday: a West Virginia paper has found four local cases of Iraq vets who died in their sleep after taking a combination of drugs prescribed for PTSD. More on this soon.
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Greg Mitchell's new book has several chapters on Iraq vet suicide. It is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. It features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joe Galloway.
