Rove vs. Carville

Last night I attended an event at a local performing arts center.  It was part of the "2009 Speaker Series: Live and Uncensored" and last night's event had Karl Rove and James Carville debating each other with Charlie Rose moderating.  It was pretty interesting.

Karl Rove obviously has a lot more riding on things since he's fresh off of 8 years playing the role of political mastermind.  He was full of facts and figures and had statistics coming out of his ears until my eyes glazed over and I was about to start begging for charts and diagrams to help me keep them straight.  He is clearly still in the mindset of trying to defend George Bush's presidency while also trying to control what happens in the future to the Republican party.  He was defensive, over-bearing, and surprisingly convincing at times.  It was interesting to watch him in action and realize just how he controlled so much of the political scene over the last decade or so.  He can take any statistic or fact and turn it around to make it sound exactly the way he wants it to.  There were times last night where I thought to myself "Hmmm....good point....Hey!  Wait a second!"  He is a total master of the spin.

James Carville was very entertaining.  He, of course, was the guy that ran Bill Clinton's campaign and obviously is a bit more distanced from the process than Karl Rove.  He was entertaining and full of zippy one-lines but definitely had less overall substance last night.  And part of that comes from the fact that he was not trying to defend the least popular president in (recent) history. He just sort of let Karl ramble on and on and then he'd throw out something like "Keep talking Karl.  It won't change anything." and "Facts are facts.  They speak for themselves."  He didn't fight back much but he also didn't need to.  Karl was digging a big enough hole on his own.

The political make-up of the crowd was pretty surprising to me.  It seemed to be about 60/40 when it came to Democrats and Republicans.  Massachusetts is such a liberal state that I thought it would have leaned more left but it was fairly balanced (or as balanced as Massachusetts gets).  You could tell that Karl Rove hadn't spent a lot of time in Massachusetts or done much research on our political issues.  During an election it would be pretty much a waste of time and money for a Republican so why would he have?  He offered up "No Child Left Behind" as one of Bush's biggest successes while in office and that's a pretty hot topic here in Massachusetts on both sides of the aisle.  It was probably the only time that nearly the ENTIRE crowd loudly booed him.  Otherwise it was pretty evenly split.

All in all it was an entertaining show.  I have to say, my favorite part was when Karl Rove was complaining that Charlie Rose kept interrupting him (Karl does ramble....a LOT).

Karl Rove: Stop interrupting me.  You don't interrupt James!

Charlie Rose: He doesn't whine!

Classic!