A Rebuttal to Rove

Updated

That, and other news, in today's Political Panorama.

Howell Raines sees a shift in the way that the media covers election, fueled by Barack Obama's candidacy. His Portfolio essay, in fact, can be seen as a counterbalance to the recent New York Times profile of new political pundit Karl Rove.

An Obama win, Raines suggests, will change the dynamic of campaign coverage because it will signal that mainstream journalists' lionization of attack politics and the master pros behind it is outdated.

Raines recounts a panel he was on last month with Karl Rove, and he writes, "Rove, of course, pointed out that tolerating a racist preacher, as Obama did, is different from cozying up to racist politicians, and he’s right. Wright has never had the legal authority to block state prosecution of Klan murderers, as Wallace routinely did back in his days of hobnobbing with presidents.

"Rove ridiculed Obama at length for suggesting a moral equivalence between black and white racism. “We’re all morally equivalent to a guy who says ‘Goddamn America’ and AIDS was a virus concocted by the government as a genocidal tool,” Rove said. To make matters worse, he added that Obama “then concludes by suggesting that the morally equivalent black and white anger ought to find its outlet against the real enemy, which is corporate America.”

"Rove’s outburst was notable, I told the audience, “because you’ve just heard the Republican campaign in a nitroglycerin tablet,” should Obama get the nomination. Actually, I was dazzled by the cogency of Rove’s case against Obama. Clearly, if perhaps unintentionally, he had outlined a G.O.P. swift-boat game plan, updated for the 2008 general-election campaign. Obama’s crazy preacher and the candidate’s sociological observations about guns, religion, and working-class bitterness have given the G.O.P.’s video pistoleros all the fodder they need for the television commercials you’ll see after Labor Day."

Another "Fahrenheit": Michael Moore plans a sequel to "Fahrenheit 9/11," Variety reports. The pic will be released in 2009, after President Bush is out of office.

More on "W": Cindy Adams gets more details on Oliver Stone's "W," including these nuggets from page 42. "Checking a map, being told it passed "Humint," whereupon the President of the United States asks, "What's 'Humint' again?" and being told "It's Human Intelligence." A scene in which, auditing an Iraqi intercept, W. asks, "Wolfowitz, got any Maalox on you? . . . and while you're at it, trim your ear hairs." And Cheney checking his heart pills."

Smoke Out: Eugene Levy stars in a new in-theater public service announcement that offers to help people quit smoking. "All it takes is a little movie magic to make a cigarette disappear," Levy says in the 30-second spot, as he tries in vain to vanquish the tobacco stick. The spot is released by the American Cancer Society, the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the Will Rogers Institute, and directed by Paul Flaherty.