"I won (and it turns out i'm pretty good at it)" Are the 100 days up yet?
Posted on 04/14/2009 3:59:35 PM PDT by SJackson
Former White House political czar Karl Rove has a history of referring to Barack Obama as "arrogant."
As the race between the Democratic senator from Illinois and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain geared up last year, Rove went out of his way to attach the scarlet A for arrogance to Obama.
The man who managed George Bush into the White House -- with an assist from partisan Republicans on the Supreme Court -- said on Fox News last July: "I will say yes, I do think Barack Obama is arrogant."
ABC News reported that he had told a Republican gathering on Capitol Hill that the Democrat was "coolly arrogant."
"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove reportedly told the congressional Republicans. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette, that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone."
Rove's cynical "assessment" of Obama, and the word he uses to describe the man who swept the Republicans out of power, has not changed since Obama assumed the presidency.
Commenting on Fox News -- the network that describes Obama as the president "Europe anointed" -- after the latest White House press conference, Rove told Bill O'Reilly: "I've always said that I think he's sort of an arrogant guy (who says) things that are simply not true."
No challenge came from O'Reilly, who was more interested in recalling his interviewing style when he hosted Obama last year: "I was like a cougar ... I was right there."
Obama's defenders still got upset.
After the O'Reilly/Rove session Tuesday night, Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse griped, "If Karl Rove wants to call someone arrogant, perhaps he and Dick Cheney should look in the mirror. It was, after all, the administration he worked for and helped lead that left America entangled in two wars, tarnished our reputation abroad, squandered a budget surplus, and drove the American economy into the deepest economic crises since the Great Depression by insisting on their arrogant, 'our way or the highway' ideological approach to domestic and foreign policies. Arrogance was a staple of the Bush/Cheney/Rove approach to politics and policy -- eschewing accountability, blaming others and failing to level with the American people."
True enough.
But Rove, who never says anything casually, will keep inserting the word "arrogant" into any discussion about Obama -- not because the president is, in fact, arrogant, but because it is a word that the master of media manipulation knows is loaded.
The definition of arrogant generally goes something like this: "Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance." The arrogant individual, dictionaries tell us, display "a feeling or assumption of one's superiority toward others."
As Rove well understands, the suggestion that the president is presumptuously arrogant -- as the word "uppity" is defined -- is a disempowering reference. It suggests that Obama is out of place in the White House, that the president perceives himself as important when he is not, and that, most damagingly, Obama presumes he is superior to the great mass of Americans.
What Rove is practicing is a sly variation on class politics:
Obama, who is trying to use the power of government to aid dislocated workers and families threatened with foreclosure, who is holding more press conferences and doing more interviews than Bush, who is answering questions e-mailed to the White House by citizens, is an "arrogant" elitist. He's the guy at the cocktail party making fun of the rest of us.
Bush, who used the power of government to remove restrictions on bankers and speculators and in so doing fostered a scorching recession, who avoided the tough questions, who distanced himself from the media and citizens, is a homey man of the people. He's the guy out fixing a fence on his ranchette, er, sorry, ranch.
Of course, it is a false construct.
But, as the man they called "Bush's brain" well understands, lies repeated frequently enough become potent political tools.
Karl Rove, who has no intention of remaining long on the sidelines of the political power game, is determined to damage Barack Obama by defining him as a leader who is out of touch with the people.
The word "arrogant" is essential to this endeavor, as is the platform that Fox and other news outlets lend to his partisan manipulations.
There you go Mr. Nichols. Edited for accuracy.
No charge.
.
The One has many many aliases and secrets
“Show me a real birth certificate!”
Yeah, all seven of them, since the vote was 7-2.
The repeal of the Glass/Stegall Act allowed banks to expand to insurance and other financial products and was done during the Clinton administration at the urging of Robert Rubin. That is the only deregulation of the banking industry that I know of despite the bleatings of the Democrats and the media. There was a severe lack of oversight by Congress and the SEC but no deregulation.
Most aliases’ are easy to figure out.
"I won (and it turns out i'm pretty good at it)" Are the 100 days up yet?
Precisely!
Well said!
Yep!
What an arrogant bustard !!
bumpity! bumpity!
bump! bump! bump!
We were speaking of Larry Sabato
Yeppers !!
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