Calling the bow “inappropriate,” Rove wondered, “what’s that all about?” He added that Obama “simply can’t get it right” and that the bow is part of Obama’s “world-wide apology tour.” Rove concluded his assault with this final jab:

I think it’s best if American presidents do what they have always done — which is to stand for our small “r” republican values and do not bow to monarchies.

Watch it:

It’s true. Unlike Obama, Bush did not have a general policy of showing respect to world leaders. Instead, he opted for a special policy of showing particularly reverent displays of affection toward monarchs he liked. Presumably, Rove would have no complaints had Obama kissed and held hands with the Japanese Emperor:

Last night, Fox host Greta Van Susteren seemed pleased that Gibbs narrowed down the criticism. “I’m grateful that now they’ve at least refined it to two hours,” she said. But former top Bush adviser Karl Rove was incensed, complaining that “people would go nuts” if President Bush attacked NBC or the New York Times:

ROVE: I mean, imagine what would have happened if President Bush had said, “You know what, I’m not going to — I’m going to call NBC not a news organization because, well, MSNBC has some ugly left- wing opinion programming”? I mean, people would go nuts.

What would happen if somebody said, “You know what, the people who are working for The New York Times are not journalists because on the opinion page of The New York Times there are very liberal journalists and very liberal editorials?” I mean, people would be up in arms.

Watch it:

Rove must have a short memory. The Bush administration’s war with the New York Times started even before Bush assumed office. As a candidate, Bush called a Times reporter “a major league asshole,” and never apologized. In fact, President Bush never gave the New York Times a single interview throughout his presidency. (Update: Bush gave the New York Times interviews in 2001, 2004, and 2005.)

The Bush White House’s war with NBC News is more well known. In May 2008, then-White House counselor Ed Gillespie publicly sent a scathing letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, accusing them of deceptive editing and blurring the lines between “news” and “opinion.” Soon after, then-White House press secretary Dana Perino expounded upon the campaign against NBC from the White House podium:

PERINO: The reason that we sent the letter yesterday is because we had gotten fed up with the way that the President’s policies are being mischaracterized, or the situations on the ground weren’t being accurately reflected in the reporting. We had complained before. And it just reached a boiling point.

And indeed, Fox News did “go nuts”…in support of the White House.

Rove quickly disputed those comments, saying, “I don’t believe that at the time, the military was saying we need significantly more. If there had been that cry, I suspect the previous administration would have been very responsive to it.” When Sawyer asked him if he was blaming the generals for not asking for more troops, Rove replied:

ROVE: No, I’m not. No. No. No. I’m saying that the United States had what, at the time, the military felt was an appropriate level of resources, and in retrospect, everybody now, says, I suspect, I wish we would have been doing more because the enemy, particularly as Iraq got better, the jihadists and al Qaeda needed a place to go, and they went to the Horn of Africa and they went to Pakistan and began to revitalize the efforts to attack Afghanistan.

As that grew, additional resources were sent by this administration and the previous administration to Afghanistan. But in retrospect, I think a lot of military experts say, we wish we would have been doing more. But that wasn’t what was going on at the time.

Watch it:

In 2008, Gen. David D. McKiernan, then the top U.S. commander in Kabul, specifically asked the Bush administration for more troops for Afghanistan, but was rebuffed:

“There was a saying when I got there: If you’re in Iraq and you need something, you ask for it,” McKiernan said in his first interview since being fired. “If you’re in Afghanistan and you need it, you figure out how to do without it.” By late last summer, he decided to tell George W. Bush’s White House what he knew it did not want to hear: He needed 30,000 more troops. He wanted to send some to the country’s east to bolster other U.S. forces, and some to the south to assist overwhelmed British and Canadian units in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The Bush administration opted not to act on McKiernan’s request and instead set out to persuade NATO allies to contribute more troops.

The war in Iraq was the main reason that Afghanistan was under-resourced. In July 2008, Mullen said, “I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq.” Military officials have said that the Taliban was pretty much gone in 2002, but regrouped when the Bush administration decided to shift resources and invade Iraq.

Transcript:

SAWYER: I want to turn to another big topic on the table at the White House, of course, Afghanistan and will there be a change in strategy there. George Will, as you know, a member of your team, has said a 40,000 troop increase will not be enough, and that they should concentrate instead on other approaches. The additional troops will not be enough and will not work. If you were advising the President, what would you tell him?

ROVE: I’d be saying, pay very close attention to the people you have put in command of the operation in Afghanistan. Listen closely to what they have to say about what they think they need in order to achieve the mission that you have defined for them, Mr. President, in March of this year. President Obama made very tough speech in March in which he outlined the consequences to the country and our world if Afghanistan returned to the way it was in the 1990s — a failed state.

So I’d say, give the commanders on the ground the closest attention, ask them tough questions, ask them to explain their positions, but listen carefully to what they suggest needs to be done in order to achieve the goals that you outlined in March.

SAWYER: Speaking of those commanders, Adm. McMullen [sic], who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and also Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is head of the operation in Afghanistan, have both said that the reason we’re in the situation we’re in now is that this war was under-resourced, including during the Bush administration years. Let me play what they said first:

[VIDEO] McCHRYSTAL: It’s been eight years. Why isn’t it better? … We’ve under-resourced our operations.

MULLEN: This has been a mission that has not been well-resourced; it’s been under-resourced almost since it’s inception, certainly in recent years. And part of why it has gotten more serious and deteriorated has been tied to that. [END VIDEO]

SAWYER: Did the Bush administration drop the ball on resourcing the war in Afghanistan?

ROVE: Well, I don’t — I think we’ve got to look at it in a more sophisticated way. I think that these questions — these answers become clear in retrospect. I don’t believe that at the time, the military was saying we need significantly more. If there had been that cry, I suspect the previous administration would have been very responsive to it.

There is a concern about were our NATO partners meeting their responsibility? We had prescribed a certain level of activity that we wanted NATO and the United States together, our coalition partners, to meet, and we felt in the previous administration, that our coalition partners were not meeting their responsibilities. It’s an attitude shared by the current administration, which remember, went to NATO earlier this year — President Obama did — and asked for additional resources and was rebuffed. It’s one of the reasons the Bush administration added additional resources to Afghanistan, it’s why President Obama added additional resources to Afghanistan.

SAWYER: So you’re saying it was the generals’ fault that they didn’t ask for more troops?

ROVE: No, I’m not. No. No. No. I’m saying that the United States had what, at the time, the military felt was an appropriate level of resources, and in retrospect, everybody now, says, I suspect, I wish we would have been doing more because the enemy, particularly as Iraq got better, the jihadists and al Qaeda needed a place to go, and they went to the Horn of Africa and they went to Pakistan and began to revitalize the efforts to attack Afghanistan.

As that grew, additional resources were sent by this administration and the previous administration to Afghanistan. But in retrospect, I think a lot of military experts say, we wish we would have been doing more. But that wasn’t what was going on at the time.

While the impact of Obama’s “full Ginsburg” is open for debate, it’s surprising to hear Rove criticize the White House for having Obama make so many public appearances. In his new memoir, former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer writes that “Rove was of the belief that the president needed to be out speaking every day no matter what the subject”:

Other speeches were scheduled for no apparent reason at all. Karl Rove was of the belief that the president needed to be out speaking every day no matter what the subject. Sometimes Bush would be at the podium four separate times in twenty-four hours, talking about the war in Iraq, the Olympics, the economy, or the birth of Thomas Jefferson. And the next day there might be another speech on Iraq, one more on the economy and maybe a salute to Irish Americans. This obviously made it hard to broadcast a coherent message. [Latimer, pp. 181-182]

There has been concern among some that Obama’s media campaign to push health care reform could leave him overexposed. But the recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll says that’s not the case. Fifty-four percent of respondents said they see “the right amount” of the president.

Additionally, Rove asserts that “Americans have taken the measure of Mr. Obama’s health-care plan and, as his falling poll numbers attest, increasingly don’t like it.” But in reality, Pollster’s aggregation of public opinion surveys shows that support for both Obama’s health care plan and his handling of the issue has been increasing as of late.

Last night on Fox News, host Sean Hannity and former Bush adviser Karl Rove predictably mocked Obama. It’s “his mandatory jab at America,” Hannity said. “I love the blame America first,” Rove piled on. The anti-Obama duo then moved into global warming denier territory:

HANNITY: You know, we just came off one of the coolest years on record. [...]

ROVE: In 2006, only one major industrial economy in the world actually grew and at the same time reduced the absolute level of greenhouse gas emissions put out. Guess what that country was, Sean? The United States of America. He should be heralding our leadership in reducing greenhouse gases by applying technology and market economy to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Watch it:

Actually, 2008 was the coolest since 2000, not “on record,” as Hannity claimed. In fact, according to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis released in January, last year was likely the ninth warmest on record. The warmest ten years have all occurred since 1997. Moreover, the study said that we should expect the warmest year on record within the next few years:

NASA climate scientists released a new analysis today showing 2008 was the coolest year on record since 2000 but warned a new high temperature record could be broken in the next couple of years. [...]

“It still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years,” the authors said.

Rove’s global warming denier claim is slightly more sophisticated than Hannity’s but also highly misleading. While overall emissions dropped from 2005-2006 in the U.S., 2007 saw an increase from 2005 emissions. The 2006 decline was mostly due to a mild winter rather than as a result of any Bush administration policies as Rove suggested. Moreover, the U.S. wasn’t alone in seeing a drop in greenhouse gas emissions that year; the European Union’s emissions also dropped slightly during that same period.

– Donald Rumsfeld had to be talked out of editing his own entry on Wikipedia, which he referred to as “Wika-wakka.” He was a Drudge Report reader and used to watch YouTube clips that made fun of his press conference performances.

– Bush, when told that Idaho Sen. Larry Craig had been the latest GOPer to be caught in a sex scandal involving boys or men: “What is up with all these Republicans?”

– While Karl Rove was appearing on Fox News and writing op-eds as an independent political analyst, he was privately smearing Democrats. “Karl spread rumors through the White House that one of Obama’s potential vice presidential running mates — and a United States senator — had beaten his first wife. ‘Karl says it’s true,’ the president assured a small group of staffers. Then knowing Karl, he quickly added, ‘Karl hopes it’s true,” reports Latimer.

– For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too “condemnatory” and said, “I’m not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can’t get married.” (Of course, Bush ran his 2004 campaign telling that kid just that.)

– Bush on Jimmy Carter: “If I’m ever eighty-two years old and acting like that have someone put me away.”

Last week, when conservatives first began freaking out about the speech, their main objection was to a line in the suggested classroom activities that said students could “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” After receiving complaints, the Department of Education changed the section to read, “Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals,” saying that wanted to make sure “the intent is clear.”

But on Fox News today, Rove said the provision was still insidious:

ROVE: I mean, look, this, the White House was tone deaf. They clearly had a purpose here, which was let’s have the president speak to every student in the country, let’s have a study guide, let’s have them write the president, then president can them back. In fact, they still have that in there. The president’s — the students are now being encouraged to write the president about sort of their life experiences, so the White House can then, you know, using the Department of Education budget, send out God knows how many, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of letters to students signed by the president, saying thank you for writing this. Clearly has a political import. It’s clearly using the government’s budget in a way to advance the president personally. It’s the kind of thing that makes all Americans uneasy about what the White House is doing.

Rove closed by saying that “the purpose” of the speech “was partly good, partly political. It’s now been turned a lot more good, less political, but there still is a political utility to this, which is have them write the president and then using the Department of Education budget have the president write them back.” Watch it:

Rove is lying when he says “students are now being encouraged to write the president.” In fact, the only letters mentioned in the suggested activities for either Grades preK-6 or Grades 7-12 would be addressed to the students “themselves.” “Teachers would collect and redistribute these letters at an appropriate later date to enable students to monitor their progress,” says the Grades preK-6 packet.

Additionally, it’s ironic that Karl Rove would complain about “using the government’s budget in a way to advance” partisan politics. The Bush White House inserted politics into federal agencies in an unprecedented manner, using “asset deployment” to have administration officials boost GOP candidates with photo-ops and grants. For instance, in March 2008, then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced a pilot program for the federal No Child Left Behind law, even though Minnesota didn’t have enough qualifying schools to participate in the program. Spellings announced the program during an appearance with then-Sen. Norm Coleman, who was in a tough race against Al Franken.

Rove said that he supports Bennett’s work on the Healthy Americans Act – the health care bill Bennett is co-sponsoring with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon – although he said it’s “not exactly the bill that you or I would like each and every section.”

Bennett said his bill is not a negotiating tool on health care, but it will be there as an alternative after Democratic reforms are blocked. “The No. 1 assignment in 2009 is to kill Obamacare,” Bennett said.

Another Republican member of Congress, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), also expressed a desire to “kill” health reform today. Asked on ABCnews.com’s Top Line today if “Sen. Kennedy’s passing” would “change anything about the political equation” for health reform, Barrasso replied that “What I’m hearing all across the country is ‘kill the bill.’” Watch it:

The poll also goes on to find that 61 percent of his constituents support the creation of a new public insurance plan that anyone can purchase. Cooper will be appearing with Karl Rove and other conservatives this Saturday at a conference titled “The Third Rail of Healthcare Reform: Cost,” yet he has shied away from holding a town hall meeting with his constituents.

[T]hat’s what a lot of economists are saying. Our stimulus package is retarding the day of growth not accelerating the day of growth.

Watch it:

Actually, economists participating in the latest monthly Bloomberg News survey said that “recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s has begun as President Barack Obama’s fiscal stimulus — derided as insufficient and budget-busting months ago — takes effect“:

The economy will expand 2 percent or more in four straight quarters through June, the first such streak in more than four years, according to the median of 53 forecasts in the monthly Bloomberg News survey. Analysts lifted their estimate for the third quarter by 1.2 percentage points compared with July, the biggest such boost in surveys dating from May 2003.

Analysts say that the stimulus added at least 1 percentage point to economic growth in the second quarter of this year (though the economy still contracted). “The signs of the stimulus are there,” said Allen L. Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics. “Government — federal, state and local — is helping take the economy from recession to recovery. I think it’s the primary contributor.”

Transcript:

ROVE: Well, I think economists are saying that the recession appears to be on the edge of being over, but we’re gonna have shaky retail sales and we’re gonna have unemployment persist into next year, we’re gonna have unemployment continue to go up. So it’s not going to feel like good economic times — and we aren’t. It just simply means that we’ve stopped declining. We’re plateuing, we may be able to start growing a little bit.

I thought it was interesting, though, notice that the headline in the Wall Street Journal this morning is about growth in Europe, and Germany, and France. Remember when president Obama went to the G8 and said ‘you oughta try you oughta pass a stimulus package like we did?’ And both of them said forget it. Well, their economies are recovering faster than our economy is. And that’s what a lot of economists are saying. Our stimulus package is retarding the day of growth not accelerating the day of growth.

This $20,000 fee was paid every month this year, February through June. The Wonk Room has more.

[W]e hear what senior aides were saying privately after the Bush administration withdrew the Supreme Court nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers, or we find President Bush confiding wistfully (and sounding serious) that his dog, Barney, was the son he never had. Latimer was on Air Force One with Bush and Karl Rove after Rove announced his resignation.

We hear there’s a story of how Rove spoofed the overly formal national security adviser Stephen Hadley’s penchant for eating off a silver platter at late-night work sessions, while everyone else had cafeteria trays, by serving Hadley himself with a silver tray.

There are said to be interesting observations of some of his bosses on the Hill, including one who had trouble with basic facts and another who had a tendency to hide from his staff by barricading himself in his office.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the secret CIA program that Vice President Cheney allegedly ordered hidden from Congressional oversight involved plans to kill or capture al-Qaeda operatives. Last night on Fox News, top Bush adviser Karl Rove refused to comment when asked by host Bill O’Reilly if he knew anything about the program. “I want to limit my comments to what I’ve read in the newspapers and observations,” he said. Rove then appeared to make the argument that executive branch should not inform Congress of what it is doing:

ROVE: Look, it’s interesting. The CIA briefed Congress to this, I guess, in June. And the Congress immediately leaks it. That, itself is, a violation, I think, of several statutes and indicative of why it is so dangerous to give Congress information.

Watch it:

To clarify, Congress did not “leak” details of the secret program. The Wall Street Journal cited “former intelligence officials familiar with the matter” in its report. But Rove’s comment seems to confirm the Bush administration’s motives for routinely attempting to hide information from Congress.

Transcript:

O’REILLY: Now, CIA, the far left running wild with some kind of undefined program that the CIA didn’t tell Congress about. Do you know anything about this undefined program? You were in the White House at the time.

ROVE: Well, I want to limit my comments to what I’ve read in the newspapers and observations.

O’REILLY: Why can’t you tell us what you know?

ROVE: Well, because, look, it’s interesting. The CIA briefed Congress to this, I guess, in June. And the Congress immediately leaks it. That, itself is, a violation, I think, of several statutes and indicative of why it is so dangerous to give Congress information.

Remember, this is about according to The Wall Street Journal a program that was designed and for which people were trained, but a program which was never put into effect. And so Congress is saying we want you to — we want you to brief us. We, the left wing in Congress, want you to brief us on ideas you have. Not necessarily on programs that you executed.

O’REILLY: Right, so we can tell The New York Times what they are. That’s what they want.

Of course, Rove was never actually approved by the Senate either. As Steve Benen points out, Bush had so many czars that “it quickly became the butt of jokes. Newsweek satirist Andy Borowitz suggested in 2007 that the White House needed a ‘lying czar’ to ‘oversee all distortions and misrepresentations.’”

It is surprising that Rove finds the appointment of czars to be “a giant expansion of presidential power” because he actually served as the “domestic policy czar” in the Bush White House. In fact, President Bush himself appointed numerous czars in order to deal with various public crises and controversies, including a “cybersecurity czar,” “regulatory czar,” “AIDS czar,” “bird-flu czar” and “Katrina czar.” Moreover, Rove’s criticism of Obama is ironic, given his role in an administration that was marked by the expansion of executive power.

– Kyle Schmidt

ROVE: This White House has carried pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted events to a new height, and they’re getting away with things that in any previous White House, the media would have eviscerated the press secretary and the White House for it.

Watch it:

ThinkProgress contacted a White House spokesperson who said that at yesterday’s health care town hall event in Virginia, half of the tickets were given out by the school (to “students, faculty, staff, as well as members of the health community from the area”) and the other half by the White House (”grassroots activists and people involved in the issue in the area”). The spokesperson then explained how questions were chosen:

The President posted a video on YouTube several days ago, saying respond to this video with questions for me on health care, and we got hundreds, and all of those are online. So in terms of the videos that were selected, anyone can look at the range and see which ones we did and didn’t select. That’s fully transparent. They’re all up on YouTube; they were all up yesterday on our website.

Because YouTube doesn’t actually have a voting function, our new media staff took videos that were rated highly by other users and selected, from among those, questions that represented the range of things being asked. So a lot of people in the progressive community still want a single-payer system, so the first question was from a single-payer advocate. We took a question from a Republican member of Congress, Mike Burgess, about medical malpractice reform.

The spokesperson then noted that there were also questions taken from people who were following along on Twitter and Facebook. When asked whether these questioners or audience members were pre-screened for their political ideology or whether they agreed with the President, the spokesperson replied, “Absolutely not.”

Of course, pre-screening for political ideology is exactly what the Bush administration did.

In March 2005, people seeking tickets to a Social Security event were quizzed about their support of President Bush and his Social Security plan ahead of time. In April 2005, Bush’s security detail threw out three people from an event in Colorado because they had a bumper sticker reading “No More Blood For Oil.” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said that if there’s any evidence people might “disrupt the president,” they “have the right to exclude those people from those events.”

Bush even screened the assembled group of soldiers he would meet in Iraq during a 2003 Thanksgiving visit: Soldiers had to fill out a questionnaire asking whether they supported Bush.

Transcript:

HEMMER: This was the scene at the White House in the press room before the town hall event took place on health care. Roll this with Helen Thomas.

(VIDEO) THOMAS: You have left open the suggestion that you are pumping the answers.

REID: Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened — the question was screened.

GIBBS: Chip, Chip, let’s have this discussion at the conclusion, how about that?

THOMAS: No, no, no. We are having it now.

GIBBS: Well I’d be happy to have it now. Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?

THOMAS: It’s a pattern. It isn’t the question. It’s a pattern of controlling the press. (END VIDEO)

HEMMER: Now, Chip Reid’s next to her from NBC. Look, people are talking about this today, not the town hall meeting. How does that hurt the cause and the message about health care reform?

ROVE: Well, look. I thought — I’m like Jonah Goldberg; I really find it unusual to be in agreement with Helen Thomas. But notice what Gibbs said. He said, in essence, you have the right to end in a question by e-mail and we have the right to determine whether or not we ask it, so what’s the problem? It was sort of like, it’s a free-flowing town hall meeting if you get to send in via Twitter or e-mail your question, not if we have free-flowing questions in the room.

This White House has carried pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted events to a new height, and they’re getting away with things that in any previous White House, the media would have eviscerated the press secretary and the White House for it.

HEMMER: And when something like this happens, you know, the credibility is shaken and the argument stands on weaker ground. It’s plain and simple.

ROVE: Well, they got what they wanted.

The post Rove linked to asks whether White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gives “credit to President Bush for the foresight and determination to see the surge through and deliver the results we saw this week.” The answer was “no.” Rubin then went on to lament the White House’s inability to “celebrate America’s accomplishments.”

Last night, Rove was back on Fox News — this time with Greta Van Susteren — and argued that it was improper for ABC to get the access, considering that former ABC reporter Linda Douglass is now working in the White House:

ROVE: If it’s not crossing a line, it’s getting comfortably too close to a line of where a news network becomes a cooperating partner of and an adjacency to the White House communications shop. And I think the presence of a former ABC reporter as the communicator-in-chief inside the White House on this issue also raises questions about how it ended up in the hands of ABC.

Watch it:

It’s hard to take Rove’s outrage seriously. After all, Fox News’ Bret Baier received “unprecedented access” to the White House (as well as Air Force One and Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX) in February 2008 for a “documentary” on President Bush. Baier said that the piece offered “a President Bush you’ve never seen before.”

In October 2007, Baier also hosted a special titled “Dick Cheney: No Retreat,” which was “a rare glimpse into the life of the vice president.” Of course, in the period leading up to Fox gaining such extraordinary access, who was the White House press secretary?

Tony Snow…who had previously worked for Fox News.

Transcript:

VAN SUSTEREN: First of all is I confess I would love to do it. I don’t get it. He doesn’t talk to FOX. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, is that, you know, we chased the first lady — former first lady around the Middle East on breast cancer awareness. Now, that wasn’t policy, but that was promoting, you know, a health program. But you know, we had a unique access, but anybody else who wanted to pay the freight, I guess, could have gone along, too, other — there were other empty seats there. Other networks could have.

And the third thing is, is, you know, the next day, we’re going to be doing everything the president hates because we’re going to be going over every single thing he says and challenge it. We’re going to have — you will probably be on and everybody else, and we’re going to have a chance to see what is it the president said. We finally get — you know, we get it laid out, and then we can take a look at it and scrutinize it.

ROVE: Yes. I have two points to make. First of all, we’ll be scrutinizing it the next day, but we won’t be scrutinize that night in front of the big audience that he’ll have having a primetime evening news program on a major network with a unique venue, the East Room of the White House. So he wins no matter what.

Second of all, this is my problem about it from the perspective of the president. He’s devaluing the White House. The White House ought to be used for big things, like major addresses to the country and press conferences and heralding the best of America. He’s turning it into a campaign backdrop. And eventually, it’s going to diminish the White House, as it’s going to diminish him.

I mean, he is in our face all of the time, and I’m not certain, from the White House perspective, that that’s necessarily a healthy thing. I do know that it’s devaluing the White House. And I also know that it’s extraordinary. Tell me one other major network that during any other big battle that a president did a similar kind of a thing. Did they do it when Bush was working for the tax cut or No Child Left Behind? Did they did it when Bill Clinton was trying to pass NAFTA, or trying to pass Hillarycare? Did they do it for Ronald Reagan when he was trying to pass his tax cuts? Did they do it for Jimmy Carter in any of his initiatives? No, this is really unusual, and I think it’s crossing a line.

If it’s not crossing a line, it’s getting comfortably too close to a line of where a news network becomes a cooperating partner of and an adjacency to the White House communications shop. And I think the presence of a former ABC reporter as the communicator-in-chief inside the White House on this issue also raises questions about how it ended up in the hands of ABC.

HANNITY: Karl, it seems rather unprecedented. You were there in the White House for the better part of eight years. Did this ever happened while George W. Bush was president?

ROVE: You know, look, it’s normal for the networks to want to come in and do an interview inside the White House or to get a glimpse behind the curtain as to what goes on there. This is an unprecedented access to the White House and more importantly an unprecedented use of the White House. I can’t remember a time when the network came in and was going to devote a significant block of time to covering an issue that was on the president’s agenda.

As Media Matters first noted, when Fox News’ Bret Baier was granted “unprecedented access” to the White House in Feb. 2008, the network billed it as a “documentary,” not an “infomercial.” Further, Fox was not only welcomed into the White House, but aboard Air Force One, to Bush’s ranch in Texas, and into the Oval Office. Baier introduced the “documentary” saying, “Fox News has been granted unprecedented access inside the President’s world. … It’s a President Bush you’ve never seen before.” Watch a compilation of Hannity last night and Baier’s special:

Prior to airing the Bush special, Baier hosted a special on the famously-reclusive vice president entitled “Dick Cheney: No Retreat.” Fox billed it as “a rare glimpse into the life of the vice president” and aired the program Oct. 13, 2007. Similarly, on Oct. 30, 2007, Fox’s Greta Van Susteren was granted what she called “unprecedented access” to First Lady Laura Bush’s tour of the Middle East.

In the period leading up to Fox gaining such access to the Bush White House, former Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow was serving as White House Press Secretary, leaving office just weeks before Baier’s first documentary aired.

Indeed, a new public health insurance plan could restore competition into the consolidated health insurance market, lower health care premiums, lead the way in innovation, and improve health quality.

Republicans have mischaractarized the public option is a “government takeover” of health care. In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove argued that “if Mr. Obama signs into law a ‘public option,’ government-run insurance program as part of health-care reform we won’t be able to undo the damage.”

Rove’s rhetoric echoes the poll-tested talking points of Frank Luntz and other conservatives determined to protect the private insurer’s monopoly over coverage and deny Americans choice. The Wonk Room has compiled a fact-check of common public plan myths:

MYTH 1: A public option is unnecessary: “It’s unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That’s competition enough.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: Insurer and hospital markets are dominated by large insurers and provider systems. Private insurers rarely negotiate with dominant hospital systems and typically pass on the higher costs to beneficiaries in the form of higher premiums. Already, “1 in 6 metropolitan areas in a 2008 study of more than 300 U.S. markets is dominated by a single health insurer that controls at least 70% of consumers enrolled in health maintenance organizations or preferred provider organizations.” Such consolidation negates any real competition. Without it, insurers don’t negotiate prices and boost their profits. In fact, “there have been over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years,” and premiums have risen “nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes.” A public plan could, in an environment of head-to-head competition, push private insurance companies to negotiate more aggressively with providers and dramatically lower health care spending.” [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008; LA Times, 4/09/2009]

Read the full list or download a PDF version.