Rove questions

Don Siegelman had a long way to fall. Just a few years ago, the Democratic Governor of Alabama… Don Siegelman had a long way to fall. Just a few years ago, the Democratic Governor of Alabama was on his way to being reelected for another term in a traditionally Republican state. Now he is serving an 88-month prison term for corruption.

The corruption charges stemmed from a group Siegelman established to advocate a lottery that would support the state’s education system. The lottery vote lost, and his group suddenly found themselves in a hefty debt. So Siegelman accepted $500,000 from the CEO of HealthSouth Corp., Richard Scrushy, to pay back the loans. Siegelman appointed the CEO to the state health care regulation board not long after, a board he’s served on in previous administrations.

The prosecution argued that since Siegelman was personally responsible for repaying the loan, it constituted a bribe. His defense attorneys argued that he saw no personal benefit from the money.

To be sure, Siegelman’s act was a violation of ethics that shouldn’t have gone unpunished. It also, unfortunately, was not a terribly uncommon occurrence – and one that doesn’t typically result in such a long prison sentence.

There’s been lots of grumbling in the press and among both parties over the event because one Republican activist attorney, Jill Simpson, is claiming a top GOP operative used friends from his old days as a political consultant in the state to push the prosecution. William Canary, a friend of this GOP operative, has run political campaigns for Siegelman’s opponent, including the current governor, Bob Riley. Canary’s wife Leura, a U.S. attorney, worked in the office that led the prosecution case against Siegelman. Leura Canary didn’t recuse herself from the investigation until late in the game. Simpson also claims that this GOP operative asked her to dig up dirty photos of Siegelman cheating on his wife.

Who is the GOP operative Simpson refers to? You guessed it: It’s tonight’s speaker, Karl Rove (Rove, of course, denies the claims).

Rove, one of the most brilliant political svengalis of our time, will speak tonight at Pitt. Anyone interested in politics should try to come and listen to the man credited for turning our current president from an alcoholic Texas rancher to leader of the free world – a man who has won 34 of the 41 campaigns he’s worked on, according to Atlantic Monthly journalist Joshua Green (not the same guy as our beloved Pitt News funnyman). By all accounts, Rove has a brilliant understanding of how elections work – not only how to target and mobilize voters, but also in zeroing in on the issues that the electorate wants to hear. His willingness to use whisper campaigns, push polling and even dig through opponents’ trash cans to win elections is indicative of his cynical genius.

Last week, I saw an event called F*** Rove on Facebook. The group was started by Pitt student Aaron Arnold, who, along with a cohort of students, plans to protest tonight’s event. The group doesn’t say exactly why its members are protesting, but one complained that this was just another lame attempt by the administration to try to interact with the student body. So I called the Pitt Program Council and spoke with Executive Director Tori Lee to see if the administration played a role. No, she kindly told me, the PPC is directed entirely by elected students and funded by the Student Government Board.

I can understand why people are excited to have Rove here. I can also understand why some are upset about it. But this protest in particular makes me uneasy. Protests, at their best, raise awareness about a subject not considered by the general public. At their worst, they’re displays of frustration in which no dialogue is exchanged and no understanding is reached. I hope that this protest will be the former kind, but I fear it will become the latter.

Frustration is fine, but it’s not productive. Rove is not the kind of mindless bigot Ann Coulter is; a protest of the sort that took place for her would be ill-suited for someone like him (actually, giving Coulter any attention at all is inadvisable, but that’s another column). If you really want to raise awareness tonight, do what I suspect Rove would really dislike: Act like journalists. Journalists have been a thorn in Rove’s side his entire political career and have dogged his work in this administration (though not hard enough, by many estimations). In a 2006 speech he derided reporters, who he said tried to “draw attention away from the corrosive role their coverage has played focusing attention on process and not substance.”

So if you really want to “protest” Rove, hit him with substance. Read profiles about him, and pass them on to your friends. Then come up with questions – about Don Siegelman, about his involvement in leaking Valerie Plame’s name to the press, about the firing of U.S. attorneys, about the whisper campaigns against John McCain and Ann Richards that have been attributed to him. In short, raise awareness. I look forward to it.

For Marin’s favorite Karl Rove profile, e-mail mec45@pitt.edu.