Or, the end of the Rove era
Or, why I'll miss Rick Santorum
Or, the return of the repressed reality
Or, why I actually liked Bush yesterday
Or, why there is great cause for optimism that good things are coming down the pike
Karl Rove has been a giant turd clogging the colon of American politics.
The Republicans took power in 2000 not to govern, but to have power. Even the Iraq war so beloved by neocons was less an effort at geopolitical realignment in its actual execution than it was a power-grab: War presidents get power. We did come dangerously close to Orwell's 1984 -- Power for the sake of power. And the prerequisite for power is to make reality disappear, to make it malleable to rhetorical manipulation. A second requirement is that one doesn't use power to actually govern, because when you govern you piss people off. To wit, the Republicans got cornered on immigration, and when they actually tried to do something, they split their base. Better to just talk, demonizing some nebulous boogey-man (Liberals, Osama, Hillary...). This was Rove's contribution to the new century. Like Dick Morris, he isn't an ideologue - he's an insecure little man who wanted power and would do anything to get it (see his College Republican days). This is the opposite of a Rick Santorum - he actually believes in the substance of his psycho vision of America, and wants to make it a reality; and, he believes that the country agrees with him. Thankfully, they don't. Santorum, for all his flaws, wanted to govern, Rove didn't. He wanted to use government to consolidate power, to create a permanent majority that served the interests of his Robber Baron patrons. Not because he cared one way or the other whether this was a good idea, but because it was the best way to hold on to power.
The conservative movement on the other hand did have an agenda. They wanted to shrink government - I can live with this, even if I don't agree. But for Rove, government is merely the visible symbol of success at gaining power. This divorce from the substance of politics -- governing - has led to a political environment where substantive efforts to address reality are dangerous to the ruling class. To have an object for power other than power, to act on power, means to compromise it because then people would have a chance to vote on what you've done. This is why the main achievement of the Republican Congress has been approving judges. Judges don't make policy - the conservative ones merely protect the administration by getting out of the way of power. Everything else - the Senior drug plan, for instance - was not done out of a belief that it would improve America, but simply to broadcast the message that the Administration actually gave a shit. The lying, the smear campaigns, the misleading language for initiatives, the contempt for science -- all have their roots in the idea that politics is entertainment for the masses, that there need be no material link between a government and the world it governs. Democrats have been prevented from participating in this government, barred from offering their own amendments and initiatives. Of course they have - substantive engagement with reality merely affirms a link between politics and the world.
As this administration has gone on, reality has necessarily receded farther and farther from view. Lies beget lies, a house of cards that stays erect only through the presumption of presidential infallibility, through the hiding of reality. This is why Rumsfeld was sent packing after, rather than before the election. To change course means admitting fallibility, thus opening the door to questions, to doubt. Bush and Rove were trapped by their own methods. The President could not govern, could not adapt, because to do so would be to pull out the central pillar of power - it would be to allow the government's policies to be measured against the reality of outcomes.
One gets the sense that Bush is a weak man in over his head - a Dan Quayle for our times - and his entire presidency has been predicated on pretending otherwise, on using Rovian politics to justify and legitimize power. I was fascinated by Bush's press conference yesterday. He actually seemed comfortable with the press; his words seemed comfortable in his mouth. My thought is that this is because, like Limbaugh, he no longer has to lie. When he said that Democrats too want to keep America secure, one wonders why this is the opposite of his rhetoric before the election. I think it's because he has nothing left to protect - Reality returned with a vengeance, and suddenly the rhetoric of infallibility, of demonization, is useless because it is and was ever only rhetoric, designed to distract us from the real world. It's not even a pragmatic tactical decision by Bush - it's an inevitability, simply the fact that without power one has no choice but to actually govern if you ever hope to have power again.
I've heard people talking about how this election signals the death of the conservative movement, or of PNAC's vision, or of the power of the religious right. None of this is true - it just means that these competing visions of America will no longer be held in a politically expedient stand-off but will instead be liberated to attempt to act on and answer for their visions.
This is why I am hopeful that we will have a chance to see real change, a real democratic and at time progressive agenda in action. I wrote in a diary Tuesday that we need to have investigations and possibly impeachment, in order to restore a sense of accountability, and a reality that has the weight of consensus. I stand by that wish, but it is not inconsistent with being excited about a positive agenda. Let the facts lead where they will - as long as we have some, and as long as what happens next is not more of the same theater of politics but rather a politics that seeks to act on reality consistent with the will of the people and the law.
With this election, Republicans and Democrats alike understand that the people will bestow power based on whether or not they like the agenda and the results. The conservative Republicans will continue to argue for their agenda and it will be rejected; the remaining moderate Republicans will now have a chance to govern, and will sometimes move to the Democratic side; the Democrats will have an interest in showing that they can get things done that matter to the American people. It won't be perfect, but it will be better than we've had in a long time. I would rather deal with people who have a lust for imposing their views than with people who have only a lust for power. Rove's empty politics was the turd blocking up the system, and it has been flushed.