New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has a MUST READ COLUMN today — pegged to GOP political maven Karl Rove’s assertion that Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama is like an arrogant country club member who hangs around the clubhouse smoking a cigarette with a beautiful woman on his arm making snide comments.
Read this in FULL because she notes at the beginning that, once upon a time (before he was the presumptive nominee), Rove said he was impressed with Obama. Read it from beginning to end. One thing her piece underscores again: as a campaign strategist (and he is an informal campaign adviser to GOP presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain) Rove will create and promote a caricature of a candidate that is then cloned on talk shows, partisan new and old media and in campaign ads.
But here’s our quote of the day — the end:
Charlie Black crassly argued in Fortune that a terrorist attack would “be a big advantage” for John McCain. And what’s scary is, Black is the smartest adviser McCain’s got.
It’s hard to believe that if Americans get attacked after all these years of getting strip-searched at the airport, they’re going to be filled with confidence at the performance of the Republicans on national security. And at least Obama wants to catch Osama and doesn’t think he’s getting his directions on war from “a higher Father.”
Rove’s mythmaking about Obama won’t fly. If he means that Obama has brains, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama is successful, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama has education and intellectual sophistication, what’s wrong with that?
Many of Obama’s traits are the traits that people in the population aspire to.
It looks as if Rove is on the verge of realizing his dream of creating a permanent position for the Republicans.
Unfortunately for him, it’s in the minority.
Read it in FULL. This column is one that has echoes of the late great Mike Royko.
See our earlier post on Rove’s comments HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.