I’m sure that by now, most News Hounds readers are aware that a new book reveals Hillary Clinton’s aides kept a so-called “enemies list.” However, if you want to know exactly how dead-on-arrival this “scandal” should have been, you only have to look to Karl Rove, who offered up his $0.02 on the matter to say that lists of this nature are an institutionalized political practice - right before he tried to explain why Hillary’s list should be an outrage, anyway.
On Monday’s “Happening Now,” the first question to Rove was whether or not there was anything unusual or sinister about keeping this kind of list. His reply?
Well, look. Let’s put this in the context of the presidential campaign. It’s not unusual in a presidential campaign to have a list of people that you’re attempting to get support from, and rating one to seven. One is the most gettable, they’re right on board, seven is they’re on the other side.
So, Rove opened up by admitting that this is a non-story, as well as a non-issue. All politicians do it, he explained how it works… and then he remembered where he was.
He continued:
But this is different. Number one is they were for us, most helpful… Number seven is most treacherous. And that’s a little bit odd. That really is an enemies list. This is not, you know, “Where can we put our effort in order to get some more endorsements for Hillary?” It is “Who has really aggrieved us, and who is really on the outs with us?” And that’s odd. To spend as much time as they apparently did compiling it. And then at the end of the campaign, to formally formalize it, and put it all in a big data sheet, all in a big spreadsheet and update it so that the candidate, now former candidate, walks out of the office with a, you know - with what appears to be like an enemies list. “Who can we most feel aggrieved at?”
Look, in politics, there are not permanent enemies, or permanent friends. That’s the way politics operates. And for Mrs. Clinton, in particular, to have directed her staff to “make a list of my enemies and rank them how bad they were” is, I think, really a little bit over the top.
This doublespeak went mostly uncontested by host Jon Scott but let’s dissect Rove’s wordplay here:
- All politicians do it, but it’s odd that Hillary did.
- When Hillary does it, instead of ratings desgnating "supporter" to "opponent," we have "follower" to "enemy."
- When Hillary does it, it doesn’t bookmark non-support, it catalogues grievances.
- It’s not unusual in general politics, but for Hillary, it’s over the top.
See where this is going? Rove is admitting that in general there’s nothing new here, but still wording it as a slur against one person. Even the chyron seemed to be against him, as it said Clinton kept a list of supporters, as Scott read an excerpt from the book - that further undercut the "scandal":
It would be political malpractice for the Clintons not to keep a track of their friends and enemies. Politicians do that everywhere. The difference is the Clintons, because of their popularity and the positions they have held, retain more power to reward and punish than anyone else in modern politics. And while their aides have long and detailed memories, the sheer volume of the political figures they interact with makes a cheat sheet indispensable.
Instead of dwelling on that inconvenient truth, Scott moved on to say John Kerry was rated a seven for his strong endorsement of Obama. One would think that Rove could understand that ranking because Kerry supported the opposition, but no. He changed the subject to the ratings of Sen. Claire McCaskill, Kathleen Sebelius and Janet Napolitano as sevens, too, as the result of their united-as-women support for Obama (though Rove did drop that McCaskill had said she wouldn’t want her daughter near Bill Clinton). It was almost as though Rove didn’t realize how much he was proving this a non-story, while trying to play it up.
But Rove wasn’t done grasping at straws:
Now, look, I want to touch on something you said earlier. Yes, in politics, people do like to remember their friends, in order to reward them down the way. But I found that the most successful politicians tend to be those who don’t keep an enemies list. They may have somebody that clearly they don’t like, but they don’t systematically say, “Alright, let’s go back and look at everybody who might not have been with me and let’s mark ‘em down and rate ‘em on how bad they are.” Successful people in politics focus on broadening their list of friends, not on developing lists of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, who’s been a saint, who’s been a sinner, with the recognition that anybody who’s a sinner can ever be anything but a sinner. That’s division, that’s not multiplication. That’s subtraction, not addition politics, and it doesn‘t make for a very healthy kind of a campaign, or a very healthy kind of an office holder.”
Once again, Rove was saying that everyone does it, but when Hillary does it, it's sinister.
And once again, while Scott did not outright agree with Rove, Scott just as clearly declined to call him on the double talk. Nor did Scott challenge Rove’s contention that the list served as reminders of enemies that Clinton would “some time in the future gain revenge and extract retribution on.” As Fox’s own Howard Kurtz noted, “There is no evidence …that Hillaryland actually punished anyone” on the list. But Scott did take the trouble to point out the “long histories of political reporting” of the book’s authors.
Meanwhile, there’s a bit of hypocrisy here. This is, after all, the network that defended Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map. And that routinely sends a producer to stalk and humiliate people who cross Bill O’Reilly. Or whose president canceled the newspaper subscription of a criticial author writing an unauthorized biography.
Do you recall Karl Rove speaking out about any of those practices? I don’t, either.