According to this article in the NY Times, the President’s chief political advisor and unindicted co-conspirator, Karl Rove, is slated to head up the reconstruction effort of New Orleans: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/politics/15bush.html
Mr. President, you won the election and can’t run again (more’s the pity as I suspect you’d be handed your ass right about now) - please stop campaigning already.
I sincerely hope that was just somebody playing with the reporter. Has Rove ever held a job that was not purely political?
If it means Rove spends 12-15 hours a day for the next several years wading through toxic muck, acting as a guide for bulldozers and sandbag-dropping helicoptors, and personally hosing out the interior of the Superdome, keeping him free from any Beltway commitments, then Yes, I do feel much better.
Otherwise, uh, No.
So the levee will be repaired, but it’ll still leak.
So – which is it?
It’s hard to know what to make of this. It could be nothing more than that Rove is chairing the meetings, which probably falls within normal day-to-day White House business. Or it could be that Bush/Rove see the reconstruction as primarily a political problem, with Rove in charge of spinning things to make it seem that the reconstruction is proceeding in the best possible way.
It seems unlikely to me that Rove will be made reconstruction czar. Bush needs him too badly just to manage all the other political shit – Supreme Court, Iraq, etc.
Just when I thought this administration couldn’t get any more self-parodying…
Is Rove going to draw a big fat paycheck for overseeing this thing?
But I can’t object too strongly to this. Rove is a very smart guy. A traitorous, treacherous, slimeball fucknose cuntnugget assbomb, but a smart one.
Hubris strikes again. When you have a man who’s been strongly linked to exposing a CIA agent and putting lives at risk for petty political reasons, what better way to show the world “I don’t give a fuck” than to put him at the head of the country’s most visible project?
“I take responsibility” my ass.
This? Is brilliant!
Paul Bremer has more experience at this sort of thing than Karl Rove.
They could even use the same abbreviation for the organization; instead “Coalition Provisional Authority”, call it the “Cajun Provisional Authority.”
Say what you want about him, the dude is extremely effective in getting the job done against seemingly insurmountable odds. After all, he has been credited for spearheading the campaign which brought us G.W. Bush.
If Rove can get Bozo the Clown elected to the most powerful position in the free world, rebuilding the Gulf should be a piece of cake.
Oh, I just can’t get riled up over this. If Rove is at all successful, it’ll be the first good thing he’s done for the country in a decade.
How will New Orleans be rebuilt by having Rove start anonymous smear campaigns? “Hey, contractors, come build in New Orleans because Chicago residents secretly eat boiled puppies”?
He’s good at campaigning, creating talking points, etc. I don’t see any reason to belive that he’ll be good at managing a reconstruction project (other then the fact that he undoubtably has the ear of the Prez).
That said, I can’t believe this is true. The main reason the hurricane hurt Bush is because it revealed he’d put a crony with little disaster management skill in charge of FEMA. Putting a second crony with little relavant experience in charge of reconstruction isn’t going to show that he’s learned his lesson. Also, Rove is mainly known to the public for his ability to manage the press and spin the news. Putting him in charge makes it look like Bush’s #1 priority in this is damage control, and that the actual reconstruction is an after thought. I can’t belive someone as politically astute as Rove wouldn’t realize this.
50 clams says that when Rove is finally crucified in the Plamegate affair, Bush and all his cronies will cry to the press, “Why are you going after the guy heading up our New Orleans reconstruction efforts? Why do you hate America?”
Damn, you beat me to it!!
I’m skeptical about the veracity of this rumor, though.
I expect Rove to announce on Thanksgiving Day that the Reconstruction Project (Code Name: Operation Gulf of Freedom) has been completed.
Jesse Helms is going to lead the NAACP.
(It’s about as beleivable)
You mean his #1 priority isn’t damage control?
This is only fair and long overdue. I mean, why should Cheney and his cronies always get all the fat contracts?
Be fair – Rove doesn’t care about money. He cares about power, and wielding it invisibly.