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96 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Explains McCain's Loss, January 29, 2005
Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add link to the others books on what Rove did to us.
This is quite a chilling movie, and it makes even more sense to me now that I have finished reading Lee Harris' "Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History." Never mind John Kerry, a world-class loser with a wife to match--what this movie explains is how and why John McCain lost the South Carolina primary to Karl Rove's dirty tricks.
What really chilled me is not that Rove plays dirty against Democrats, but that he plays dirty against Republicans.
The movie begins with an early look at Karl Rove's start with Lee Atwater teaching young Republicans, including "dirty tricks" that the movie takes pains to point out are questionable but not illegal.
Included in the middle year's are stories with on the record interviews and replays of old media stories that make it quite clear that Rove is not above planting a "bug" in his own office (one with a six hour battery life, only 15 minutes of which have expired by the time it is "found"), nor of co-opting a single rogue FBI special agent to "coincidentally" have opponents under supeona just when it matters most.
Over the course of the movie, one learns that Rove is a master of playing the politcal "game" (only his version actually kills people) at three levels:
1) Disciplined overt politics--staying on message
2) Underlying messages that are legal but misdirecting
3) Underlying dirty tricks that are out and out unethical
This is where I was able to see the connection between Rove's playbook from Texas, and how John McCain was done in after a roaring victory in New Hampshire, when the South Carolina primary suddenly produced carefully orchestrated whisper campaigns about McCain's mental abilities, his black "love child" (actually an adopted orphan), and his family member's drug addition (an open issue being dealt with but made to sound terrible). In all this John Weaver, McCain's political director, shines as a voice of reason and honor when discussing the details.
Over-all the movie suggests that Rove has brought politics to a new low in ethics, and a new high in efficiency. Rove is a killing machine. He turned 9-11, and the war on Iraq, into political devices, and suggests that Rove, who has never served in uniform or in combat (nor have Cheney, Rice, or Wolfowitz), is essentially sacrificing American lives to keep his candidate in power.
The movie comes to closure with more than one commentator from Texas, where they all know Karl Rove *real well,* saying, "There's no rule he won't break."
Well, as a moderate Republican, I find this troubling. What was done to John McCain in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, and to Max Cleland of South Carolina in his Senate race, strike me as so reprehensible as to call into question the future of the Republican Party.
I recommend this movie to every American, but especially to Republicans, in whose name some things are being done that should shame us all.
See also, with reviews:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Karl Rove: A Clear and Present Danger to American Politics, May 7, 2006
Bush' brain depicts the tactics and character of George W. Bush's political consultant, Karl Rove. They describe Rove as an American Svenghali who will stop at nothing to get his candidate elected. They provide compelling proof of the history of dirty tricks he has been involved in.
As a nerdy kid, Rove took an interest in republican politics at an early age. As a member of his high school's debating team he would bring stacks of index cards to intimidate his opponents, opponents who didn't know that many of the cards were blank.
In college, Rove broke into the office of a democratic candidate and stole his stationery. He printed up hundreds of copies saying that there would be free food and free beer at the opening of the candidate's new headquarters. He delivered the flyers across campus and skid row. Rove's character was taking shape.
But we really get to know Rove's chicanery and penchant for dirty tricks when he is directing the campaign of the republican candidate for governor of Texas in 1986. With the race at a dead heat, Rove "discovers" and announces finding a bugging device poorly concealed in his office, the day before the candidates' debate. Rove implies that it was planted by the opposition. As the Texas Rangers are closing in on the investigation, a republican judge closes the investigation, and Rove's candidate wins. It turns out the battery in the bug had a life of six hours, and the FBI had determined that only .2 of the battery's juice had been used--fifteen minutes. Was it planted by Karl Rove to make it look like it was from the opposition? The interviewees in this story answer with a decided yes.
Rove's other penchant was mastering the "whisper campaigns" against Governor Ann Richards and Senator John McCain. These whispers implied that Richards was lesbian, and McCain had a baby from a black prostitute, that McCain had turned in his fellow prisoners to his captors in Vietnam.
Bush announces that he has no knowledge of where these attacks against John McCain are coming from, and does not accept responsibility for them. The DVD makes it quite clear that Rove was running everything about the campaign. And the candidate who was going to bring personal responsibility to the White House, denied the same.
Senator McClellan a three-limbed amputee veteran of Vietnam was attacked as a man who opposed homeland security legislation and protrayed as soft on terrorism. He did oppose homeland security legislation, but only President Bush's plan.
But Rove's penchant for revenge was also chilling. When Ambassador Wilson's refuted the president's state of the union message about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium "yellow cake" from Niger, Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent in a column printed by Robert Novak. This exposure is ironic on several levels. One, it was President Bush (41) who signed into law making it a crime to expose a CIA agent. Two, Valerie Plame's job was to identify and prevent middle eastern countries from acquiring nuclear technology and weapons. Three, it was Karl Rove who was fired from the Reagan/Bush campaign for leaking sensitive information to--Robert Novak.
The DVD falters where it attempts to show that Karl Rove really does not care at all about the troops he helped send into Iraq. The focus here is on one married marine lieutenant's family who mourn his death in Iraq. This is a deliberate plug for sympathy and anger against Rove. Rove has certainly accomplished enough for a nation to be angry about without this story.
As for the reviews that see this DVD as an obvious slant against Rove, well, that's exactly what it was supposed to be. There is no reason to create a balance when you are trying to tilt that balance in your favor. Besides, if you have to show the good in Karl Rove, this DVD may have been impossible to make.
If prosecutor Fitzpatrick's investigation is able to get at the truth, Karl Rove, President Bush, and Vice President Cheney may have a lot to answer for.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A depressing but important portrait of the man who gives Bush his ideas, October 24, 2005
I got a copy of BUSH'S BRAIN about a year ago, but have only now gotten around to watching it. Partly this is because at a certain point, if one has followed the Bush White House very closely, one can become oversaturated by the unceasing depressing accounts of acts that offend conscience and sense of decency. But the conjunction of someone else wanting to see it who had not and the impending possible announcement by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of indictments in following the investigation of White House leaks of the identity of an FBI Field agent Virginia Plame (contrary to the film she was no longer a field agent, but the protocol is to not reveal the identity of a field agent for five years, because knowing her identity could aide other secret service agencies in figuring out who her fellow agents might be-the threat in this case was not to Plame but to her colleagues), wife of former Bush 41 ambassador Joseph Wilson.
If one has, like I have, read thirty or forty books on Bush or Republican policies in the past decade, this documentary, based on the book by the same name by James Moore and Wayne Slater, will contain little or nothing that is new. If one has not followed the Bush White House closely, it can serve as a useful introduction to the man many people regard as the real president of the United States. So complete is his control of activities in the White House that little is done or undertaken without his involvement. It is not, I suggest, a mere coincidence that Bush's outrageous recent reaction to Hurricane Katrina--which hit the Gulf Coast on a Monday creating a breach in the levy on Tuesday, but of which he was largely unaware (despite a flyover in Air Fore One) until Friday morning, when he watched a DVD put together by aides of CNN and other telecasts-occurred when Rove was in bed and out of action with severe kidney stones.
I believe Karl Rove is emblematic of much of what is wrong with contemporary politics. The ideal of political discourse and debate is two contenders for office putting forth their views and their reasons for holding such views. It has degenerated to Karl Rove starting whispering campaigns that John McCain's dark-skinned daughter might be the result of an extramarital affair with a woman of color. Even if Rove did not start those rumors, as is almost universally believed, it is inconceivable that he would denounce them. Although this is not dealt with in the film, Rove had a myriad of connections with the absurd Swiftboat Veterans sliming of John Kerry. All of this points to Rove's strategy: forget serious political debate, just attack, attack, and attack. In fact, the point of attacking is in part to mask real political positions. For instance, one of Rove's fondest dreams is dismantling social security, a massively popular program. The is a culture of deception and mislabeling rampant in Washington right now, especially in the GOP, and most intensely in the Bush White House. How many administrations would label an initiative to gut Environmental clean air standards the "Clear Skies Initiative"? It is a culture that Rove has done more than anyone to foster.
Most of the documentary is focused on Rove career before his ascendance to the White House. A large number of people who knew both Rove and Bush in Texas provide a great deal of insight into several incidents, including Rove's famous bugging of his own office and then absurdly accusing political opponents of doing it, the strategies employed in getting Rick Perry elected head of the Texas Agriculture Board, and the whispering campaigns against Ann Richards.
Of course, rarely in political history has anyone of Rove's ilk been able to get away with such nonsense forever. His great mistake came in talking with members of the press about Valerie Plame. When George W. Bush inexplicably named one of the most tenacious prosecutors in the United States to investigate the White House leak, Rove's fate was probably sealed. His career as a top level GOP operative is probably close to an end. But the kind of political trickery and misadventures that he espouses and practices are still very much part and parcel of the GOP political landscape. Ironically, the man credited with starting this kind of slash and burn politics, Lee Atwater, after striving to overcome a brain tumor in the early 1990s, repented of this style of politics and cautioned everyone, both in his party and without, to return to a more genteel, issue-oriented style of politics. It remains important, as long as there are Karl Roves polluting and obstructing the democratic process to know where they come from and how they operate. So, seeing films like this or reading the books they are based upon will remain crucial for those concerned with the kind of popular democracy espoused by people like Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, and his cousin Franklin.
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