How the VWRC Would Have Done IT (Another Karl Rove Adventure)

CL: Karl what happened to your old office, the pumpkin-colored one with the closet? What happened to Robo-Karl?

The deputy chief of staff and I were sitting in a vestibule in the basement of the executive office building next to the White House a week after the mid-term elections of 2006.

KR: Robo-Karl was just the beta version. I’ll be baaaak!

CL: Wrong movie Karl. He can’t run in 2008 he wasn’t born an American citizen. Look, I know it didn't go that well this time. I'm sure you're a little depressed, but it's going to be okay.

KR: Well that whole majority leader thing was fun.

CL: Karl, you ever heard of karma?

KR: What are you suggesting?

CL: Well, just suppose....

Karl looked up at me, his eyes wide and sad.

KR: Suppose, I had maybe done some of the things they say I did?

CL: I'm not saying you outed a CIA agent or caused someone back in Texas to commit suicide by spreading Mark Foley like rumors about him. But suppose, you did some things in the past, not big things, but little stuff that maybe you've never told anyone about.

Karl drops his head.

KR: Like Lee Atwater stuff...You know I always wondered about that brain tumor and how he suddenly started asking for forgiveness at the end.

CL: Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night?

KR: What person with my job hasn't?

CL: Karl, let's imagine you maybe showed the president how to start a war just to win an election.

KR: You mean, not like I did anything like that, just how I would have done it?

I pull a folder out of my backpack.

KR: What's this?

CL: It's the Downing Street memo. Let's suppose you knew this sort of stuff well before the invasion and someone really did send an order to "fix" the evidence.

KR: We're really just supposing....

I raise my hand to signal and a camera crew slips in the door.

CL: Absolutely. Remember, that special prosecutor already said you won't be indicted.

KR: Well, he did meet with me an awful lot of times for someone as innocent as I happen to be.

CL: So let's say you killed 35,000 civilians. How would you go about it?

KR: You know it probably really is 650,000.

CL: Well, I was wondering why the Iraqi government quadrupled its own estimates just a day after the election to 150,000. You guys were saying that 45,000 was the only reliable official estimate? How does that sort of thing happen?

KR: I'm not saying I had anything to do with it right?....But, if I were to be involved in something like that, I'd be hitting the cable shows with talking points while quietly reminding Baghdad that if the new estimate got out before the election the new Congress might just let the new government do a Saigon 1974, but this time with no helicopters out.

CL: But, what if they still wanted to talk?

KR: You go after their wives and children. You remind them that it's not just them stuck in Baghdad with no Green Zone.

CL: Would the President have known about anyt of this?

KR: Of course, but not in any way that could be traced directly. In the meantime, you stall any investigations on the ground of national security and executive privilege.

CL: That seems awfully cynical.

KR: Maybe, but it feels awfully good.

CL: What feels so good about killing thousands of people and misleading the American people?

KR: Of course, I've never done anything like that, but say I did. There's nothing like the power....

CL: You mean like a good push poll can be like a dagger to the integrity of the system?

KR: Now, I didn't say that. You did.

CL: But maybe you would feel it, if you ever did something like that?

KR: It's kind of like saying, "Who's your daddy now, who's your real daddy?"

Karl suddenly jumps on a chair and begins gesticulating wildly. I start motioning to the camera man to cut the scene.

CL: Karl, we're just speculating now right?

KR: I killed thousands of people, I ruined lives, I kept the truth from being heard. So what? You know the really scary thing.

CL: You mean scarier than what we're already hearing?

KR: Fewer people care about this than care about O.J.

It's a few weeks later now. Karl got his office back and as always he was right. Not only did Fox news refuse to air the footage, no other mainstream network would even mention Karl's "confession".

I did finally get a producer from "Hardball" to talk to me.

HBP: "We've always known this stuff. America's always known this stuff. It's just not news."

CL: What do you mean it's not news?

HBP: Who's gonna watch something like that when they can talk about O.J. instead?

Karl Rove adventures

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