Rove's off White House Payroll -- Will That Free Him to Play Even Dirtier Tricks?
Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
What Happened to That Prosperity Tax-Cutters Promised Us?
Sam Pizzigati
DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower
Environment:
20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth
Food:
10 Tips for a Sustainable Thanksgiving
Sarah Newman
Health and Wellness:
Is the House's Health Bill Really Worse than Nothing?
Joshua Holland
Immigration:
Hate Group, FAIR, Is Looking for "Ethnically Ambiguous" Actors to Amplify Its Racism
Adam Luna
Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: 3 Potential Obstacles to Health-Care Reform
Adele M. Stan
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
Obama Quietly Backs Renewing Patriot Act Surveillance Provisions
Willam Fisher
Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Obama Will Announce 34,000-Troop Escalation in Afghanistan 'Within Days'
The smart money says Rove is quitting ahead of one or more indictments, and here's hoping. There is, however, precedent for speculating that he's not really "leaving" at all.
The precedent, as is so often in this administration, is Nixonian. In the Nixon Library's newly released tape of the President's phone conversations shortly before, on, and after Election Day 1972, the longest is Nixon and Chuck Colson riffing out their second term plans -- most especially for a new "information and counterattack capacity in the White House" that would be more durable, and better deniable, than the one that got them in trouble with Watergate.
The idea is for Charles Colson to leave the White House with great fanfare, as if riding off into the sunset after a job well done. He will establish a law firm that will actually be a political front working for Nixon: "I wouldn't call it 'Colson,' something like that," Nixon says; "I would just say, "Washington Associates," or something..a good, high-sounding name." It would serve as a base the usual Nixonian work of manipulating and intimidating the media; and, intriguingly, a new idea, establishing a new polling firm, scrubbed of its origins in the White House: "I mean, the point is, let's just get the polling done our way."
Colson was also to work to establish, as another White House front, a think tank, perhaps having one of Nixon's most loyal donors, DeWitt Wallace of Reader's Digest buy out the American Enterprise Institute so they could take over its administrative capacity: "They're right at the verge of becoming what we want," Colson explains.
Meanwhile Colson's "replacement," a young staffer named Ken Clawson will be the inside man, coordinating Colson's new satellite office -- "a place for the nut-cutting." Clawson fit the bill admirably. He was an accomplished White House ratfucker and author of the "Canuck Letter," a fake letter sent to a New Hampshire newspaper accusing the Democratic frontrunner in early 1972 of using a racial slur.
As often on these tapes, what we have here is a mere tantalizing hint of wheels within wheels, some of whose operations ended up fully revealed, some of which did not. This one, as it happened, never got off the ground; Colson proved too busy trying, and failing, to stay out of jail (may history repeat itself!).
But here's the question with which I'd like to leave readers, especially the lawyers among you: What more can Karl Rove achieve for Bush and the Republican Party outside the White House than inside it?
See more stories tagged with: bush, karl rove, white house
Rick Perlstein blogs for Common Sense at the Campaign for America's Future.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.