Karl Rove buries past to court John McCain

Karl Rove, the political mastermind behind George Bush’s two terms in power, has been cuddling up to presidential candidate John McCain, the man he helped Bush to defeat in a bitterly-disputed campaign for the 2000 Republican nomination. Rove has recently started working pro bono on the Vietnam veteran’s bid for the White House.

This is despite the fact that Rove was reportedly one of the team behind a vicious smear campaign to discredit McCain before the South Carolina primaries eight years ago. There, someone involved with the Bush campaign instigated a series of telephone calls in which Republican voters were asked whether they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he'd "fathered an illegitimate black child".

The underhand tactic was intended to cast doubt on the parentage of McCain's youngest daughter, Bridget, who in fact had been adopted from a Bangladeshi orphanage by McCain's liquor heiress second wife Cindy. Amid the ensuing rumours, McCain lost the state and Bush ultimately pipped Al Gore for the presidency. When he later spoke about the people behind the calls, McCain said: “I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those." (Continued below)

Now Rove is coming over all angelic. Interviewed on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, he turned on the schmaltz. Speaking of the day Cindy McCain had brought Bridget to America for an operation on her cleft palette, he said: "And when she got off the plane, there was John McCain. And he said what do you got? And she said I've a child who's dying. We need to get her care. And John said well, who's she going to be staying with? And Cindy McCain was saying 'I was hoping she could stay with us'. And today, that young child who was near death, is their teenage daughter…I don't think most people would understand the compassion and love… that would come from a moment like that."

So it seems that sentimentality can be added to the list of things Rove is prepared to use to manoeuvre his man into power. Back in 1970 he broke into a rival campaign office, stole sheets of paper with the Democratic letterhead and distributed bogus fliers offering "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" at music concerts and homeless shelters.