Truth - Al Franken [34]
“We were trying to counter the positives from that ad,” a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile.
Yep, you were right. But how do you smear a guy with that without having your fingerprints all over it?
“It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information,” the staffer went on. “That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that’s one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out.” This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state.
Ah. Smart.
Excuse me while I run away from my computer and vomit.
ONE MINUTE LATER
There. I vomited in the wastebasket. I had been planning to use my office bathroom, but I didn’t make it.
Let’s go back to Joshua Green. He talked to Kennedy’s campaign manager, Joe Perkins.
“What Rove does,” says Joe Perkins, “is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin’, tobacco-chewin’, pickup-drivin’ kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take.”
So even though Kennedy won in the end (by one percentage point), when his term was up, he decided not to run for reelection. He just didn’t have the stomach for it.
When Green sat down with Kennedy, he met a man whose victory a spelling bee champion might call “Pyrrhic.”
Kennedy appeared to derive little satisfaction from having beaten Rove. In fact, he seemed shaken, even ten years later.
See? Rove took Kennedy’s strength (touching the lives of kids) and used it against him (saying he was touching kids). Genius. What a pro.
Actually, I have to take another break. Hold on.
THREE HOURS LATER
This is Franni, Al’s wife. I’m with him at the hospital. I told him this would happen if he looked too closely into the Karl Rove situation. This book is really taking a toll on Al, and I’m thinking of calling off the whole thing. Or maybe he could just focus on debunking lies from Rush or Sean Hannity. That always makes him happy. I hate to see him like this.
5 A Brief Recuperative Debunk
Lenox Hill Hospital—June 17, 2005
As you may have read in the press, I’ve been hospitalized with Rove-induced septic shock, and I am under orders from my wife and doctors not to discuss the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign until my organs are functioning properly.
At first, Drs. Vajpayee and Fischbein insisted that I take a break from all forms of political commentary. Franni just laughed, albeit a bit hysterically. She knew that was impossible. Besides, she pointed out, debunking right-wing jerks has historically had a therapeutic effect on me. After all, that’s how Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot was born. Recovering from surgery for a knee injury incurred while tussling with some hecklers at a Harris Wofford rally.1
So we reached a compromise. I could debunk to my heart’s content as long as I wasn’t debunking dishonest attacks on Kerry by the Bush team. What they didn’t realize was that this agreement had a loophole that you could drive a truck through. By debunking the dishonest attacks on Kerry by dishonest, semi-unofficial Bush surrogates like Fox’s Sean Hannity, I could continue work on the chapter without losing my health insurance for not complying with my doctors’ instructions. It would work fine, so long as Fischbein and especially Vajpayee didn’t get wise to my scheme.
I know just where to start.
The fundamental goal of the GOP was to define Kerry as a flip-flopper. This wasn’t a new tactic. Bush’s father attacked Clinton as a “waffler” who