Karl Rove, Machiavelli, and Me

"War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes an ability to execute, military plans."
                                                                  —Niccolo Machiavelli.

Think:

Boy Genius, his president and his party are afloat in a sea of troubles. Natural, economic, political, and ethical disasters surround and confound.

What to do, what to do.

Actually the answer is obvious.

Think back to the first eight months of this regime, from January to September, 2001. All the good old f-words come to mind: floundering, flubbing, fucking up.

The same people (only Ashcroft and Powell are gone) who have come to believe themselves masters of the planet had their hands on the levers of power then. And clearly had not a clue about what to do.

In the summer of 2001 Bush’s ratings were already falling. The economy, because of the NASDAQ collapse was a mess.

Then came 9-11.

Deus ex Medina.

Horror came first, followed quickly by overblown jingoism (Patriot Act, TSA, "homeland" security, etc.).

Purpose, as the old preacherly tautology has it, is what gives life meaning.

Bush’s deer-in-the-headlights, what-me-worry smirks and grimaces were replaced by expressions of pseudo-manly resolve that, with his aw-shucks, down-home, totally faux Texas accent, played really well with the voters.

Tax cuts for the wealthy and budget cuts for the poor rolled through Congress with hardly a whimper of protest. And next thing you knew, there we were at war, bigtime, making the Middle East safe for Halliburton.

Propelled by these waves of America-first-ism, the electorate (albeit narrowly) gave the whole team another four years to do their oligarchic, theocratic will in the world.

But then came quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, a stuttering economy highlighted by escalating fuel prices, rolling Republican ethical scandals, and natural disasters that laid waste to thousands of lives and uncounted square miles of Gulf Coast real estate.

Withal, the false front of the Potemkin presidency was decimated and the expedient nakedness of unbridled crony capitalism was put—to our shame—on display for the whole world to see.

So.

You’re Karl Rove, and you’ve got not just one mess but many very big messes on your hands. You think back to those glory days of the lovely fall of 2001. You remember your boy atop the ruins in Manhattan, your boy preaching to the nation and the world from the pulpit of the National Cathedral, your boy rallying the troops, and so on and so on.

How to recapture the glory?

Simple, my friends.

You truly believe that what’s good for George W. Bush is good for America, and the world.

You’ve already defined an "Axis of Evil." You know you’re a master at behind-the-scenes manipulation of people and events. You know your boy shines (at least in the eyes of many voters) in a national crisis.

What do you do?