As you've seen Karl Rove is in Seattle & environs today to do a fundraiser for Dave Reichert, the incumbent in WA-08, who Darcy Burner hopes to unseat. Rove visited Microsoft and spoke to a crowd of a couple hundred people. I went to witness first hand who this person is, although I was tense about it and walked over singing Neil Young's "Living with War" to brace myself.
In summary, Rove didn't give a speech, but instead made a few comments about technology before taking questions. Except for a couple of questions, most were pretty easy for him and he was humorous and entertaining. But when asked tough questions about the war in Iraq and the environment, Rove was extremely combative and even disrespectful to the questioners. In fact, given this audience of mostly highly educated professionals who were very respectful to him, it was surprising that he felt the need to be so abrasive. Or maybe it wasn't so surprising...details below the fold.
Background: Microsoft has a PAC (MSPAC) to which employees can contribute. The PAC gives the money to both Republicans and Democrats who support...Microsoft. I give a small amount each year, which enables me to get invited to see the speakers, including many greats like Madeleine Albright and Ted Kennedy.
Anyway, most of the audience didn't show much partisanship, although a few pro-war comments elicited cheers from a small number of wingers and those of us on the left responded a couple of times.
Rove started by commenting on an HP computer his company bought in 1983 and how far tech has come since then. He made the point of tech allowing people to control their destinies more and talked about Wal-Mart, where every associate can know how close they are to their weekly targets. (Of course I thought about how tech was allowing their managers to keep closer control on their productivity...)
The questions:
1) Easy: About the need for more tech professionals; Rove answered in support of more immigration of educated and farm workers.
2) Easy: Questioner gave soliloquy on his support of "the war" (no differentiation between Iraq and terrorists and joked about "our" torture being playing Red Hot Chili Peppers and making them get naked -- what a cretin). Rove used the question to talk at length about how bad Bin Laden is, citing Bin Laden's book. Rove claimed "no one wants war." Went into great detail about some 9/11 survivors and those they knew who didn't survive. He was clearly trying to elicit emotional outrage from the audience.
3) Fairly easy: About Hamas winning a Democratic election and the implications. Rove gave a pretty good answer to this. He said they focused on how corrupt Fatah was and promised people better hospitals and such, while not focusing on their charter to destroy Israel.
4) Hard: Here's where it got interesting. A guy said he had been in Israel during the gulf war, had been in NYC on 9/11 and again in Israel this summer. He said something like, "Don't you think that the Middle East is worse off in terms of Al Qaida stronger and now spread to Iraq since we invaded Iraq?" Rove went ballistic. He ranted about al-Zarqawi getting medical treatment in Bagdhad after 9/11 and then how he set up a training camp in Iraq. [applause from the wingers]. The questioner challenged that the 9/11 Commission said there was no connection with Saddam [applause from the left]. Rove raised his voice that the Commission backed his claim and reiterated his claim.
5) Easy: Guy asks Whitehouse to help convince EU that Microsoft doesn't have to modify Windows Vista to sell there. Rove laughs that he has to check his Blackberry to make sure he answers correctly. He then says how trade is important, including free and fair trade [he actually said "fair"]. Then he gave an anecdote about Bush and Putin talking about chicken exports.
6) Easy: What do you see as the biggest challenges in the next 4 years. Rove: winning "the war" [no distinguishing what war] and keeping the economy going. Talked about how entitlements will hurt us in the future. Said Medicare and SS are unsutainable. Then he went into how some doctor was saving money by using online record keeping and such -- optimistic about tech again.
7) Hard: This one surprised me. Guy said he worried that the economy was always being put ahead of the environment and cited how 30 new coal fired plants were going to be built in Texas. Rove got his hackles up again. In a very combative tone he said we have to keep economy first or China and India will polute more. The questioner challenged him with statistics on Texas polution. Rove got even more belligerent and claimed that because we were more efficient we polute less and reiterated that the economy was most important.
Phew.