I suppose the answer is "yes." They work in the sense that the dirty tricksters get people elected. But, in the long run, they don’t work. They essentially define the future behavior of the elected. Certainly, Richard Nixon stands as such a person. In his case, the election of 1972 was a paridigm for dirty tricks. He wasn’t going to lose, under almost any circumstances. Yet he kept it up in an unrelenting way, and it cost him the presidency and sent no small number of his Administration to prison. Bush [Rove] has made a career as a dirty trickster, and his fate is yet to be decided. But one thing is certain, he will not go down in history as anything but a miserable failure, a laughing stock, a caricature of a President. Maybe worse, if there’s enough libido left to actually dissect what he and his comrades have done. Would he have been elected without dirty tricks. Not likely, either in Texas or in the White House. Would he have been a better President without dirty tricks. That’s an unanswerable question. It’s a George W. Bush that’s never been. One thing about him that does stand out. Nixon was at the helm. George W. Bush is only a passenger, riding the train driven by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rove.
The biggest tragedy of all with the Bush team is that after using dirty tricks to get elected, they then used dirty tricks to get us into war with Iraq. 911 gave them an excuse to "kick some ass" in the Middle East, so that’s what they did. And they used their dirty tricks to bring it off. Now that the War in Iraq has turned out to be the biggest mistake imaginable, they’re using dirty tricks to justify it. The mentality of spin, strategizing, talking points, leaks, secrecy, manipulation, media control keep coming at an alarming rate. While they’re good at all these things, the results are a staggering tragedy. I hope Congress, the voters, and "whatever gods may be" can stop them from compounding their sins by spreading war to Iran. The great danger in the media blitz from the Administration and the Path to 911 ploy is that they’ll maintain enough power to do even more damage.
Do dirty tricks work? For a while. Let’s pray that "a while" is over!
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