courtesy of twistedsifter.com

 So there I was Friday evening September 11th, 2009 headed south on one of my favorite Indiana two lanes on my way to my older daughter's liberal arts college campus which is located in a very unlikely small town in the middle of cornfields.  It was a beautiful day as can only happen in Indiana this time of year.  Calendar picture perfect, crystal blue sky, golden corn stalks drying in the sun.  It reminded me very much of another September 11,  and now I was on my way to encounter one of the consequences that came out of that other day eight years ago, Karl Rove.

  My daughter's college has a tradition of bringing in guest lecturers to speak on many topics and they rarely shy away from controversy. Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell and  Robert F. Kennedy Jr have all at one time or another come to speak to the student body. Tonight the lecture series would take a turn from the usual format and a debate would be held between Karl Rove and Governor Howard Dean.

 The students of this small school always delight me. They are extremely type A, bright eyed and bushy tailed, inquisitive and literally manic in their pursuit of education.  Leaping out of their skins like Mexican jumping beans, they are quite a group, philanthropically motivated, studying hard and maybe partying harder.   The competition is fierce for A's and this drive makes the kids that go to the large state university in my town look like second bananas.

  My daughter had ask me to come early as she had heard rumors of buses arriving bringing protesters from the three large universities in our state and she wanted to be sure we got seats.  As we approached the beautiful new fine arts center where the progam was to be held all seemed calm.  No signs, no demonstraters,  no side arms strapped to anyone's hips (Drat! I forgot to bring mine.) and no thin blue line holding the crowd back.  There did seem to be an abundance of security but we were ushered to our seats uneventfully not even having to pass through a metal detector.  Those who brought signs were asked to leave them in the lobby. Those who wore their signage (Karl Rove is...on the front, A disgusting, deceitful liar" on the back and "George Bush: Worst President Ever) were allowed into the theater.  My daughter is attempting to obtain the Karl Rove Is tee shirt for me as she knows I would wear it proudly in public.  If I get knocked down in Wal-Mart...well, it is an interesting thing about Wal - Mart shoppers.  I have learned many of them have similar sympathies to my own from the comments illicited by my wardrobe of Obama tee shirts and  my "One Day A  Woman Will Be President"  shirt. That shirt was originally purchased a Wal-Mart. It had a very limited shelf life as it was pulled within a few days of it's being offered as being too controversial for the mid 1990's.

 There is another rumor floating that some concerned students will attempt to make a citizen's arrest of Mr. Rove for high crimes and treason. I want a piece of that action.  I love college students.  I look around for the citizen police but don't see them.

 As I wait in my seat I have the chance to listen in on some of the conversations around me (a bad habit I acquired long ago but still enjoy indulging) and begin to get a feel for the audience.  Over in the corner is a young man that my older daughter had worked with over the summer.  He being two years younger than she, spent the summer crushing on her like a moonstruck puppy; but she as the older woman and having a boyfriend already wasn't interested.  She could have mentioned to him that she has a younger sister his own age, but maybe not, my daughter youngest goes for musicians.  Still, I noticed that he does have dimples.  No one, even at age 18 should be so ridiculously good looking.

  Behind me are several Young Republicans, white and male of course, discussing whether or not Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were desciples of Machiavelli.  (Perhaps boys, but my guess would be that Rove at least studied Joseph Goebbels-scary thought, that.) It seems they are out of towners, from the large university to the south.  Their inquiries about the location of local bars gives away their true motivations for being here.

 The format of the debate involves thirty or so questions from students and faculty randomly selected by lottery. No questions will be pre-screened.  Given the academic profile of the university and it's students I expect the questions to be focused and intelligent and I am not disappointed.

 The President of the University gives the introductions and sets the tone. This will be a civil discourse so I guess we can expect no shoes flying, or loud outbursts drowning out the proceedings.  This is a debate, not a circus, rodeo, or wrestling match.  Rove and Dean enter.  What strikes me immediately about Karl Rove is the size of his head-very outsized, even for his somewhat portly body.  Governor Dean is smaller than he appears on television and thinner.

 Dean's opening statement is direct and to the point. He recognizes the students as being a part of the biggest demographic shift since the 60's and the first multi cultural generation in United States History. He urges them to remain active in politics and in their communities and that they have the responsibility to feed and nourish democracy.

 Karl Rove opens with Fraternity inside jokes.  I should have guessed, you can take the boy out of the frat house......Almost as an after thought he too waxes eloquent about the benefits of service to country and then says he hopes to give the view point of the "common sense right".  I look at my daughter quizzically-did she just hear common sense and right in the same sentence? She did. What an oxymoron.

 Rove's central theme of the night was pertaining to re-establishing civility between opposing viewpoints.  Lovely sentiment, coming from a man who is largely responsible for engineering and egging on those who  who delighted in tearing into John Kerry and besmirching his honorable war record and who  assisted in trying to turn President Obama into "the other".  As the evening wore on he also turned to confide his fears to to us.; fears of too much power being invested in the West Wing, fear of the imperial presidency.  This is crazy making talk, coming from a man who aided and abetted the creation of the imperial presidency.   He is still a man who tries to link Iraq and Al Quaida and of course when asked about torture he staunchly asserted there had never been torture under the Bush administration.  The last comment drew a loud chorus of "YOU LIE" from many of the assembled students, the only real fireworks of the night.

Governor Dean surprised me with his passion and focus.  But then this is the man who created the fifty state strategy.  He is incredibly intelligent and has great command of the issues.  (I've always been a sucker for smartie pants guys.)  When the talk turned to immigration and how illegal immigrants will impact health care reform he asked the audience how many people had Native American blood.  Perhaps a dozen hands were raised. He then looked around the fifteen hundred seat house and said, "Then the rest of us are immigrants. We are the descendents of those who rode boxcars, were tough enough to survive ocean voyages in steerage and yes, some who snuck into the United State illegally.  We have no room to make immigrants the scape goats for our fears.  Immigration he concluded is how we remain a strong and vibrant people.

 It was an interesting evening.  Karl Rove is not at all  like what I thought he would be like.  I had expected a smarmy holier than thou used car salesman sterotype.  What he is, is much more frightening.  Karl Rove is a very smart man.  He is charming, funny and charismatic.  Those qualities can entice people into doing things that shouldn't be done, even to commit crimes.  I wonder what would have happened if he had used those same qualities to uplift and motivate those who need help the most in this country.  What would have happened if he had used his considerable powers of persuasion to make this country better rather than further enrich those who were already wealthy on the backs of those who are barely getting by. The disingenousness of Rove in  worrying aloud that the Democrats are ignoring the Constitution absolutely blows my mind. After eight years of Bush/Cheney he has the audacity to worry about ignoring the Constitution.  The guy has a lot of nerve, I'll give him that. Or perhaps he is terribly self deluded.

Governor Dean as I said is a passionate man.  His angry defense of the public option for health care vs Rove's tax credit makes me want to follow him through hell. The man can lead and he cares deeply about  regular people like me who go to work every day, pay our bills and raise our kids and do the best we can. I would argue that Karl Rove doesn't particularly care about people like you and me and our hopes and dreams.

 So yesterday on September 11, I took time out to see two of the people who for better and worse have shaped our country.  It was a moment of great clarity.  We have all been trapped in 9/11/01 since  those planes hit the towers, the Pentagon, and the farmer's field in Pennsylvania.  It is time to put this nightmare in its proper place and begin rebuilding our country.  Not to diminish what happened to those Americans and others who perished that day but to celebrate them and to move forward as a people and begin being brave again instead of living in  politically induced fear and panic.  We are citizens of the United States of America, for God's sake.  We separated from our mother country and went it alone. We survived a horrendous civil war, we tamed a wilderness, died on the battlefields of two world wide conflagurations; we sent men to walk on the moon.  Surely we can clean up our own mess, face the future  unafraid, as a free and independent people who can still be the light of the world.  It is the least we can do.