Rove likes to take it both ways, and the media just likes it one, its own.

Crooks and Liars (they have the video) put this so well, that you just have loo at how they put it.

It is no longer possible to have your irony meter redline when Karl Rove appears on TV. He is so beyond the pale, so completely entrenched in his alternative reality that the only thing left to do is marvel at the brass cojones he must possess to pull off this appearance on The O’Reilly Factor. Now that the Bush administration has officially endorsed Republican nominee John McCain, Bush’s Brain tells Billo that there’s a lot about McCain that the public doesn’t know, and those things would impress them. For example, did you know that McCain adopted a dying baby from Bangladesh?

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I don’t think people know a lot about him. They don’t know about his views and values that informed him as a young man. They don’t know about what drew him to service in the United States Navy. They don’t know about all of the compelling story about the POW experience that he had. They don’t know what motivated him, but what people and places in Sedona touch his life. Let me give you just one example: I think most of your viewers be shocked to hear the story about Cindy McCain in Bangladesh, visiting an orphanage, and she has a small dying child thrust into her hands and the orphanage…the people in the orphanage say we can’t, we can’t care for her, she’s dying, we don’t know what to do. And Cindy McCain’s impulse was to hold that…hug that child to her chest, get on an airplane and bring her home. When she got off the plane, there was John McCain, and he said, “What do you got?” and she said “I’ve got a child who’s dying, we need to get her help…we need to get her care.” And John said, “Well, who is she going to be staying with?” and Cindy McCain said, “I was hoping that she could stay with us.” And today, that young child–who was near death–is their teenage daughter. I don’t think most people understand the compassion and love that would come from a moment like that. There’s a lot more of John McCain’s story that he needs to tell.

Funnily enough, Rove felt that it was his job to tell McCain’s story about his daughter Bridget back in 2000, and the version he told then was significantly different:

Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.

UPDATE: Looks like Karl Rove and some other Bush cronies are informally advising McCain now. How cozy.

This does also miss that in praising Cindy McCain, he also in that last election accused her of being mentally unhinged and drugged up.

But why should we note this, it is only a matter of Being Rove. But it is emblematic of him, strength to weakness. He turned this compassion for a baby into a slur, now he'll play it as the positive it once was.

A McCain will blandly accept the aid in winning.


Of course this follows on CNN's declaration of her perfection.

• Skipping passed the deeper trouble when she was beset by drug issues.



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Much has been made of allegations of possible youthful use of illegal drugs by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. Meanwhile, his chief GOP opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has admitted that his wife not only illegally used drugs but walked away from criminal charges. The McCains have worked to make Cindy McCain’s addiction into a political asset–despite the fact that she stole the drugs from a charity she directed and used them while mothering four young children.

In 1994, Mrs. McCain admitted that she had solicited prescriptions for painkillers from physicians who worked for an international charity that she founded, the American Voluntary Medical Team. She then filled the prescriptions in the names of her staff.

There are two ways to react to this behavior. According to the Betty Ford model, people can sympathetically respond to the oppressed and ignored wife of a busy politician who has bravely come forward to admit her overpowering addiction. Mrs. McCain took this posture when she first tearfully confessed her addiction. She and her husband repeated this performance in October on the NBC program “Dateline.”

The other possible public reaction is one of anger. Americans are prosecuted every day for such drug use. While most drug abusers purchase their drugs from street dealers, Mrs. McCain used her status as a charity director and senator’s wife to cajole the drugs she wanted.

In fact, Mrs. McCain was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration after the agency was approached by a former staff member of her charity. The investigation resulted in no charges or prison time for her, and she entered a diversion program.

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• And how here and John McCain got together.



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Not to be picky, but this is incomplete. John McCain was, as a factual matter, still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times, “aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.” (McCain then divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, and launched his political career with his new wife’s family money.)

Now, one can certainly argue that McCain’s infidelity is irrelevant. One could also argue that McCain’s adulterous relationship with the woman who ultimately became his second wife is none of the voters’ business. But if CNN is going to do a report on this, while touting Ms. McCain’s “perfection,” the network should at least give the public the whole story.

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