The End Game (?)

Politics is often compared to a chess game, and Karl Rove has been credited with being able to see many moves ahead. We've seen evidence of this in his campaigning dirty tricks; in his calculated risks with the radical "Christian" right; in his somewhat behind-the-scenes media manipulation. That's why the preparatory victory laps currently happening throughout the lefty blogs make me a little nervous.

Let's look at the chess analogy a little more closely and how the Bushies have used chess-judo against the opposition in the past.

• The advancing pawn. During the 2004 Presidential race, Kerry was in full campaign stride when the Swift Boat attacks hit. Many say his delayed reaction to the attacks was what deep-sixed his shot at the presidency. In chess, this was a pawn making a run for home. See, usually when you start advancing your pawn toward the eighth rank, it's not because you actually believe you will get that extra queen, it's because you know it will throw your opponent off his strategy. No matter what's going on in the game, if you can advance a pawn near the eighth rank, your opponent must stop what he's doing and halt the advance. It's a distraction technique. The Swift Boaters knew their claims were bullshit, but by the time Kerry reacted, they were already at the 6th or 7th rank.
• The pin. Okay, I'll admit there are two or three degrees of conspiracy theory in this, but it's hard to believe that seemingly every blogger on the planet was able to demonstrate the Rathergate forgeries after the producers at CBS had gone to such lengths to generate attention for them. Common sense would say that said producers would have gone to great lengths to authenticate the documents before the segment aired. But lo-and-behold, the segment had barely ended before everyone in the blogosphere knew the documents had been created with Microsoft Word. Seriously, it was all over in a day or two. And guess what? Even though forging military documents is a felony, no one in goverment seems to give enough of a damn to investigate who created the documents and strategically forwarded them for publication far and wide. In chess, you are "pinned" when your opponent places an attacking piece on the far side of one of your lesser pieces. Now you can't move that pinned bishop without putting your queen in the line of attack of your opponent's rook. So your opponent has just dismantled the strong, multi-piece attack you just built up by taking one of your minor pieces out of action. After everyone in the world was convinced the Rather documents were forgeries, it didn't matter any other evidence out there that Bush was AWOL. You mention AWOL? They mention Rather. Conversation over. The documentation was a pinned bishop and the whole line of attack was rendered useless.
• The discovered attack. Most of the blogosphere seemed to know that the uranium line in the State of the Union speech was probably bullshit the moment Gee-Dub uttered it on January 28th, 2003. But you know what? Most of America believed him and two months later we were at war with Iraq. See, much of America was curious but skeptical about the WMD claim, but when Bush pulled out that uranium claim, why there was the nail in the coffin. Now, not only was the Pres right, but this shit was urgent. In chess, you're playing your game and you're aware of that bishop sitting across the board, but he's really no threat to you. But then all of a sudden that bishop moves into an attacking position, and then you notice the queen sitting behind it. Now you are under attack from two directions. What seemed like no threat just a minute ago is now a deadly threat. The bishop was Bush's WMD claims and when he moved in for the kill, he revealed the attacking queen - the absolute proof that Iraq had recently purchased the final pieces to build the bomb. By the time all the true information started to fall into place that summer, the discovered attack had already been successful. Pres got the war he wanted. [It should be noted that most of us on the left watched for the discovered attack in the days leading up to the November 2004 election. We all heard the murmurings that Junior was gonna pull a Bin Laden out of the hat on the eve of the vote.]

So what have we seen happen lately? Well, to all appearances, the Dems have been playing their game beautifully. Many are just wild about Harry Reid and the game he's been playing. For example, they've limited GW's movement (Social Security); they've successfully removed some pretty important pieces from the board (Tom DeLay and potentially Bill Frist); and now they have the queen under attack (Rove).

But remember, these guys are dirty players, but they are good. And they've had a long time to think this through. We may be sitting at the cusp of a checkmate, but it may not be too smart to start talking trash until the game is actually done.