Former Bill Clinton Counsel Bill Curry: Rove Leaves Long Trail Of Dirty Tricks

[Hissyspit]

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-curry0819.artaug19,0,2642460.column?coll=hc_home_xpromo

Rove Leaves Long Trail Of Dirty Tricks
Bill Curry
August 19, 2007

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Rove was 21 when he met Donald Segretti, the Watergate-era impresario of Nixon's dirty tricks. Segretti tutored Rove in the darker political arts, but it wouldn't be fair to say he corrupted him. While still a teenager, Rove used a false ID to enter a Democratic headquarters in Illinois, steal some letterhead and forge a few fliers. Great talent is born, not made.

Rove later termed his crime a "youthful prank," a dismissal that would carry more weight had he not persisted in the same style to the present day. Soon after Segretti's shop was shut down - Segretti went to jail - Rove began a campaign for national chairman of the College Republicans. It was notable on two counts:

First, it was one of the only college political campaigns ever to merit a feature article in The Washington Post, arising from a leaked tape of Rove counseling young Republicans in such critical campaign skills as rooting through an opponent's garbage for embarrassing material. Second was how he won. Rove traveled the country filing challenge slates wherever he went. When the national convention wouldn't seat his delegates, he held his own convention. I don't have the figures, but I'm guessing he won going way. Then it got interesting.

Rove asked the Republican National Committee to declare him the new chairman of the College Republicans. The RNC chairman was none other than George H.W. Bush. Without explanation, Bush tossed out the winner of the regular convention and installed Rove. Ironically, you might say Bush was Rove's fixer.

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Except on minor counts, he never got caught again. The hallmark of his later campaigns was the use of "independent" groups to air vicious ads and spread vicious rumors while standing at one remove from Rove's candidate. He learned the technique from his last great mentor, Lee Atwater, the self-styled "daddy of smash-mouth politics."

Atwater and Rove won a nearly unbroken string of victories by the strategic use of whispered innuendos: Hey, did you hear that Mike Dukakis is mentally unstable, that Ann Richards is a lesbian, that John McCain fathered a black child out of wedlock? When that wasn't enough, the "independents" took to the air, dropping bombs like the Willie Horton and swift boat ads.

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Bill Curry, former counselor to President Bill Clinton, was the Democratic nominee for governor twice. His column appears Sundays on the Other Opinion page. He can be reached at [e-mail].

[tanyev]

1. Like a slug.

Too bad nobody ever tried dumping a lot of salt on him. Might have prevented a lot of misery.