Bush's Brain

While this documentary is quite interesting and revealing, it does sort of jump around a bit and lacks clarity and bullseye blame on some of Rove's nefarious deeds.

What is most bizarre is they abandon the flow for awhile to concentrate on one soldier's fate in Iraq. In the wake of the administration's misleading information, I'm sure they wanted us to feel the sting of loss of a real person as opposed to just "another soldier dead"... but why just this one "random" fellow? At first, I thought it may have been one of Rove's relatives or something. But it wasn't. It suddenly felt like someone changed the channel to another documentary.

Having said that though, this is definitely worth seeing as the election looms.

This documentary suggests that Karl Rove is literally Bush's brain, as if George is a puppet, with strings pulled by Karl Rove. I think that is too simplistic. The second point is that Rove, a nerd, admires George so much, that he used his high intellect and dirty tricks to put George in the Govenor's mansion, and then in the white house, thus ensuring Karl a long term job, and a physical and psychological closeness to the good looking guy, George, that Karl admired but could never be.

More damaging is the documentary blames Karl for creating a war, so George can stay in office for a second term. In other words, Karl used the Iraq war as a marketing tool for his client Mr. Bush.

This is a truly nefarious allegation - we'll go to war to stay in office for a second term, and to position George as the war president we cannot do without because of the terrorists.

I think this film gives too much power to Mr. Rove, after all he reports to someone, like a boss, so who is culpable.

Cleary the makers of this film fear the power and pranks of Mr. Rove, who may be a very dirty fighter, and may have used dirty tricks, but in their fear they have made the guy responsible for more than he probably is accountable for.

somewhat boring due to the talking heads format, but i enjoyed learning about Mr. Rowe and the republican election tricks.

I wish this had been better. I pretty much believe the argument the producers present but it seems to me that if you're not already convinced of the righteousness of their position, this documentary will not convince you.

It'll probably infuriate you.

A half dozen talking heads, all but one of whom feel they have suffered at the hands of Rove, point out -- or rather intimate -- Rove's complete commitment to pragmatism. Whether a thing is good or bad can be judged only from its consequences. Rove doesn't give a rat's behind how he achieves the goals he defines as good ones. Karl Rove has turned politics into an instrument of warfare. He's taken von Clausewitz and turned him on his head.

A lot of data points are thrown at us in this disjointed polemic but the writers don't really connect them. The reason they don't connect the dots is that they can't. Nothing can be proved. The talking heads have to evidence to show us, they just tell anecdotes, each one of which could probably be glossed with an explanatory comment that absolves Karl Rove.

The problem for anyone who doubts Rove's influence is that these minor points pile up, and we can add to them from other things we've learned during this campaign, not brought up in the film. There is a preponderance of evidence of a hidden hand in these dirty tricks. The same smear tactics reappear when Rove is running Bush's campaigns. During the Republican campaign of 2000, McCain unexpectedly beat Bush in New Hampshire. So in the next state primary, South Carolina, McCain's record as a war hero was turned against him by a whisper campaign picked up by news-hungry media. The rumors are started by flyers found under the windshields of cars in church parking lots after services. And radio talk shows are flooded with calls questioning McCain's character. McCain allows himself to be publicly irritated sometimes. (He's pretty blunt.) Maybe, it was rumored, his many years as a prisoner in Vietnam had unbalanced him. Well, a similar manipulation has been applied to Kerry, without this being brought up in the film. Kerry's war record was used as a tool against him (he lied, he wrote his own recommendation for a medal, or whatever) and when Kerry finally responded with some heat, the response was, "He's losing his cool." (That's a quote from the WH Press Secretary.) You can't help feeling that if Kerry had gotten REALLY mad, his opponents would accuse him of being unbalanced, just like McCain.

If Rove is behind some of these dirty tricks, which seems entirely plausible, then you have to admire the guy. He's like Professor Moriarty. He doesn't actually DO the job, but has someone do it for him so that he leaves no fingerprints. He's just a chubby affable guy who avoids the spotlight and pulls the strings.

It has to be understood that dirty tricks have always been a part of politics. Nobody would dispute that. But when Rove is involved the tricks turn positively filthy and sometimes illegal. It's filthy, for instance, to suggest that Senator McCain's adopted Bengladesh little girl is the "love child" that resulted from his dalliance with a black prostitute. And it's illegal (under a law passed during G. H. W. Bush's administration) for "senior officials" to expose the identity of an undercover CIA operative for purposes of revenge. Especially when the operative's job is to monitor any movement of potential nuclear materials to prevent their falling into the hands of terrorists.

The final sequence (the grieving family of a KIA) was not connected to the rest of the film and it made me wince with its lack of taste. I also didn't care for the voice-over reading of Karl Rove's letter throughout the film. The voice was made deliberately evil. Have you seen any episodes of "Victory at Sea"? Remember how the narrator pronounces the word "Japanese"? Same here. I felt my head was being squeezed in a vice. The argument was strong enough to speak for itself.

Bush's Brain was revealing, but loses focus near end. Shows that Rove has been sleazy -- very sleazy -- throughout his political career in Texas but not exactly how he manipulates George Bush today.

The 2000 Presidential campaign, the part of the movie that would have answered the film's opening question "How could this have happened?" is not really covered at all; rather the film goes abruptly ahead to the 9/11 episode. Film goes for pathos near end by showing a particular soldier who died early in Iraq thing, similar to Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, but does not tie war dead specifically to theme of Rove's being Bush's Svengali and how "this" (Bush's presidency) could have happened.

As other viewers have commented, the film's own agenda, to show Karl Rove as a sinister villain, is in conflict with the visuals of Rove as a pleasantly pudgy, self-effacing nerd. There is a distinct danger that the audience may decide finally that that visual image wins, rather than the text of the movie. Remember the scene, apparently based on a true story I read, in Broadcast News where Holly Hunter's character shows a video of a worldwide domino competition in order to portray "soft news" in a negative light; instead the comical, diverting image of tumbling domino tiles is the only part of her recitation to which anyone pays attention. The Bush's Brain people should have learned from such examples and done more to show that Rove's commercial image is what's being contested.

Do see this movie, for the sake of the facts of Karl Rove's seamy career that it does succeed in showing. It's also a good example of combining "talking heads" with other footage in a documentary to keep the audience's level of alertness piqued now and then, compared to the occasionally dulling effect of recent anti-Bush documentaries Outfoxed and Uncovered. Ironically those two are far superior films.

Seems as if a more nearly complete documentary had been planned, but that this one was rushed into release in order to be timely and to influence voters before coming election. May, rather, hurt progressive agendas that this movie is not as well done as it should have been.

Too bad this wasn't shown on television before the election. But then, again, never underestimate the power of the American electorate to be duped. Witness the bug the Republicans claimed was put in the Republican opponent's office before the election for Texas governor.

And I always thought Cheyney was the brains manipulating Bush. Whatever, it seems Bush has no mind of his own and is completely controlled by Rove! I remember Atwater repenting his deeds (but only after he was diagnosed with fatal brain tumor). His repentance was too late. Rove will never repent.

The saddest portion was the attack on Cleland by those who never fought in a war. That was really hard to watch. Not even McClain could save him from his loss.