Karl Rove Needs to 'Meet John Doe'

Et tu, Karl?

Only Miles Monroe, Woody Allen’s character in Sleeper, could have missed the firestorm Karl Rove touched off during his appearance on Fox News’ Hannity show on Tuesday night. But for the benefit of Mr. Monroe and other hypnophiles out there, here it is:

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It’s unusual to witness the typically even-tempered Rove go ballistic like this, but it’s downright discouraging to see the so-called “Architect” of so many successful Republican campaigns hell-bent to sabotage one of his own party. With architects like this, who needs building inspectors?

To make matters worse, with subsequent unrepentant appearances on Neil Cavuto’s Your World program and The O’Reilly Factor, the proudly obdurate Mr. Rove has become for the Democrats (and particularly for Delaware Senate hopeful Chris Coons) the proverbial gift that keeps giving. Rove only ever-so-slightly mollified his O’Donnell caveats on those appearances, more out of self-preservation than a spirit of selflessness. I guess we should be grateful that at least unlike Bill Ayers–the unrepentant Pentagon bomber and Weather Underground terrorist–Rove didn’t say he wished he’d done more to damage O’Donnell.

The proper way for Rove to voice his concerns over Christine O’Donnell would have been that of his fellow commentator at Fox, the ever-gracious but no less fiercely honest Charles Krauthammer:

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Krauthammer expressed a defensible skepticism regarding O’Donnell yet nevertheless didn’t exclude her possible victory in November, though admittedly making her a 10-to-1 dark horse. And, distinct from Rove, Krauthammer offered a positive solution for Palin, DeMint and the O’Donnell champions: If O’Donnell is indeed the better candidate, then rally support and get her elected. Put your political money where your mouth is.

The fatal flaw–the old Greek hamartia–of Rove’s behavior is vanity. No one would deny that Mr. Rove is a brilliant analyst and formidable political strategist, a man whose clarity of thought on res publicae is unparalleled. Yet in this instance Rove has advanced the petty self-interest of protecting his own reputation–as analyst, as GOP insider, as kingmaker–over promoting the overall good of his party and, more importantly, over not obstructing the will of the Delaware electorate.

It would come as no surprise to me, for one, if the Delaware voters choose to dismiss Rove’s primarily nugatory complaints about O’Donnell with a “Who the hell is anyone to tell us how to vote?” collective shrug. Ask Massachusetts voters about the outrage they felt when David Gergen, moderator of the Coakley-Brown debate, made the election-tipping blunder of suggesting Brown had no right to “Teddy Kennedy’s seat.” As Brown, in plain yet powerful oratory, replied “It’s not the Kennedy seat and it’s not the Democrat’s seat: it’s the people’s seat.”

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Gergen first–and now Rove–need to learn that you can lead the voters to the polling booth, but you can’t tell them how to vote. O’Donnell is flawed–who isn’t? She’s had economic difficulties. Who hasn’t? Run-ins with the IRS. On the scale of Charlie Rangel or Tim Geithner? Not even close. O’Donnell’s economic transgressions, in contrast to Rangel’s or Geithner’s, were not sins of greed or failure to disclose hidden money, but rather the everyday financial concerns that inundate most of America–the America where one out of seven now lives in poverty. O’Donnell stands for reining in spending, not increasing it. She’s far more in tune with the zeitgeist of the anti-big government mentality than her ultra-liberal spendthrift opponent Chris Coons.

Karl Rove needs to brush up on his Frank Capra movies. No, I don’t mean Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, although that wouldn’t be a bad place to start. No, I mean the film Capra directed two years afterwards, Meet John Doe. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother–just look around you because we’re all living it right now in 2010.

The film depicts a grass-roots “John Doe” forgotten man movement that sprang up around a fictitious character named John Doe who’s vowed to commit suicide on Christmas Eve out of economic and social desperation. Despite the efforts of party apparatchiks to destroy the John Doe movement, however, it’s too much in the bloodstream of the American public to be eliminated, not by the entrenched Washington power brokers nor by the mainstream media of the day, the newspaper moguls.

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Mr. Rove should take a hiatus from O’Reilly and Hannity for a night and give Meet John Doe a thoughtful viewing. He might learn a thing or two about the sort of miracle a grass-roots, populist awakening can perform. As Gary Cooper’s John Doe character says in Capra’s film:

In our struggle for freedom, we’ve hit the canvass many a time, but we always bounce back. Because we’re the people–and we’re tough.

Christine O’Donnell is the people, Mr. Rove. And she’s tough.