{"id":2101,"date":"2007-08-15T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T13:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/08\/you-can-fool-texans-all-the-time\/"},"modified":"2009-08-22T14:10:53","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T20:10:53","slug":"you-can-fool-texans-all-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/08\/you-can-fool-texans-all-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"You can fool Texans all the time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Carter Bundy<\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Karl Rove<\/a> snowed Texans for nearly 20 years. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d call that \u201call the time,\u201d but since they never caught on to the obvious until he left the state (and still may not have), let\u2019s go with it. You can also fool all Americans some of the time.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But to quote two of the greatest philosophers ever, you can\u2019t fool all the people all the time. Abraham Lincoln<\/a> gets the original credit, but Bob Marley\u2019s<\/a> contribution to the popularity of the quotation shouldn\u2019t be underestimated.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I\u2019m on vacation this week, so it\u2019s not like I needed an excuse to have an extra beer or two. But political hit man Rove just gave me one with the announcement of his resignation. For the first time, it dawned on me that somehow we\u2019ve all survived the worst of the worst \u2013 a government bent on enriching and empowering only the wealthiest and powerful of all Americans while throwing our national security under the bus of neocon ideology, and run by the most corrupt, self-dealing administration since at least pre-Depression days. We survived!<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Well, not so much the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, or the nearly 4,000 dead American servicemen and women, or 3,000 dead New Yorkers, or America\u2019s reputation as a shining city on a hill, or balanced budgets\/surpluses\/fiscal responsibility, or New Orleans, or an independent Department of Justice, or the Constitution, or the Supreme Court\u2026 Actually, come to think of it, there is a lot of carnage. But we survived with enough strength that we can repair the damage of Rove and W over the next few decades.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Not that W can\u2019t do some damage on his own over the next 17 months. But the most talented guy in the world of politics is leaving his side, meaning that W\u2019s ability to have persuasive messaging, to triangulate and to cut political deals, will be greatly diminished.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The less W does between now and his stint as commissioner of Major League Baseball, the better, and this week\u2019s announcement is a major step toward making W an even lamer duck.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t fool all Americans all the time<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

How did we survive? One word: Hubris. And its nine-word antidote: You can\u2019t fool all the people all the time.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

For as much talent as Rove had, he also personified hubris.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Hubris often is matched with tremendous talent, ambition and power, so sometimes it seems like hubris is either justified or contributes to success. But really, it\u2019s the one thing that can take down talent and ambition. While hubris can be the companion of success for a while, hubris never runs the table. Ever.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Hubris never allows fulfillment of key goals, because the focus lies with power rather than the good use of that power. And in a democracy, failure to use power for good \u2013 or at least to try \u2013 will eventually lead to an end of that power.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Sure, Rove and his buddies are multi-millionaires for life, but outside of their personal, material success, which is fleeting in the big picture, his hubris ultimately cost him most everything he pretended to seek.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He pretended to seek smaller government. But his hubris led him to believe that by taking hundreds of Billions \u2013 with a \u201cB\u201d \u2013 of taxpayer dollars, he could effectively guarantee about $100 million per cycle from the pharmaceutical industry while simultaneously tricking seniors into believing the GOP cared about them. So he thought.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

His hubris nailed him twice on this one: First, fiscal conservatives put Medicare D right at the top of the reasons to not support Republicans. Second, when Medicare D finally kicked in and seniors realized that Rove had locked them into the highest prices in the world \u2013 with no ability to negotiate bulk discounts \u2013 Rove really met his match.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

You definitely can\u2019t fool seniors all the time<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

This was one of Rove\u2019s ultimate moments of hubris, because he thought his ability to fool Texans would extend to all American seniors and fiscal conservatives. He vastly underestimated the degree to which seniors follow real-world health and financial issues.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The same group, American seniors, also exposed his greed and hubris with respect to his plans to privatize Social Security. When the history of these years is written, American seniors will deserve much of the credit for being the least easily fooled among us. Only someone as arrogant as Rove could have thought he could snow them en masse. Doesn\u2019t he know who watches C-SPAN? It\u2019s pretty much the folks reading this blog and seniors.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t fool all the world all the time, either<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Can you think of a better example than Operation Iraqi Freedom of hubris in foreign policy in the last 100 years? Operation Barbarossa, Hitler\u2019s decision to invade Russia<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> and open a second front, has to be even more arrogant, but Iraqi Freedom isn\u2019t too far behind. The idea that we could invade a sovereign nation \u2013 even an oppressive, brutal one \u2013 that posed no immediate threat to us, against the will of virtually the entire international community, is breathtakingly arrogant.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Making Rove\u2019s hubris worse (and he was at the heart of all of these decisions, so let\u2019s not spare him by blaming Cheney alone), he decided that we could fool the world into thinking that torture and human rights abuses were part and parcel of a strong defense, and not an affront to everything for which America purports to stand.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Problem is, unilateral, unprovoked invasions and torture are an affront to the best of America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>, and it cost us dearly in world public opinion and in our own vision of ourselves. Most significantly in the short term, Iraq<\/st1:country-region> hurt us in the eyes of young Muslims men around the world who now had hard evidence that the America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>\u2019s commitment to human rights and freedom was, objectively, a crock.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Osama bin Laden\u2019s jihad would largely be a small, isolated fringe movement right now were it not for a pudgy, bald, arrogant \u201cgenius\u201d who thought he could fool even foreigners into supporting America\u2019s trumped up invasions and torture prisons.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s like a whole other country<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The full list of important issues blown up by Rove\u2019s arrogance and hubris is too long for one column, but immigration, fair tax policy, deficits, public safety, civil rights, health care, education, trade and the environment would certainly qualify for their own sections.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Rove\u2019s hubris cost Rove, W, America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> and the entire democratic world seven years, trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, our national security, and a big chunk of our future. In the end, though, it turns out that you can\u2019t fool all American seniors, all Americans, or all people in other countries, quite as easily as you can fool Texans. So we survived. Barely.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Y\u2019all want to try that secession thing again? I promise we won\u2019t be as hostile to the idea this time. Just leave us Austin<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME<\/a> in New Mexico<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>. The opinions in his column are personal and in no way reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here<\/a>. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Carter Bundy Karl Rove snowed Texans for nearly 20 years. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d call that \u201call the time,\u201d but since they never caught on to the obvious until he left the state (and still may not have), let\u2019s go with it. You can also fool all Americans some of the time. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bundy-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}