Oedipal Complex
by Joseph C. Krupnick

If all the world's a stage, then the Valerie Plame-Karl Rove Affair is a Greek tragedy. Of course, Aristotle never imagined his schema would have the faintest bearing on people as unheroic as American politicos. In fact, Rove and company don't bear the slightest resemblance to the tragic heroes of the Hellenistic Era.

It is difficult to imagine an archetypal Sophoclean hero like Ajax leaking secrets to the press rather than doing the dirty work himself. Or Odysseus mouthing Rovian gems like, "As people do better, they start voting Republican — unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." Or any Hellenist this side of Socrates even looking like Karl Rove, with his hilarious double-chin and super-size-me body. It's certainly a stretch to link such unscrupulous, leg-humping company men with their classical forebears. Notwithstanding the obvious discrepancies in virtue between the Greek political leaders and their porcine American descendants, there is a striking resemblance between the flaws of tragic heroes and those of the men and women involved in the Plame leak.

In "The Poetics," Aristotle describes tragedy as following a regular pattern. Unlike "lower" forms of human inquiry, tragedy conveys themes rooted in the fundamental order of the universe. Surprisingly, there is a certain universality in the proceedings of George W. Bush's political gaffers that resonates with the Aristotelian idea of mimesis. We've seen it before. Ever since Hammurabi, leaders have been disguising their vulgar, self-interested motives (Bush and Rove's smearing of a dissenter) under a veil of virtue (Bush's protestation that he will do anything to bring the culprit to justice). Think of Julius Caesar, Napoleon or Richard Nixon.

More importantly, the Plame affair bears on a dramatic precedent that, in its literary details, is equally difficult to dismiss. First, Greek tragedies are characterized by peripeteia: tragic characters inexorably produce an effect that will be the opposite of what they intend. In Sophocles' Oedipus, peripeteia derives from the hero's reckless conduct, which leads him to murder a man he doesn't realize is his father and then, enthroned as the new king of Thebes, marry a woman he doesn't realize is his mother. Far from recognizing the folly of his actions, Oedipus naively reasons that the murder was a matter of self-defense against a homeless herdsman and the marriage is the product of his own wisdom at having solved the puzzle of the Sphinx.

Karl Rove was also characteristically reckless, and seems to have had little idea that releasing the identity of Valerie Plame to Matthew Cooper and Robert Novak would bring about such a dramatic comeuppance. He probably thought he would help stem the tide of doubt surrounding the WMD claims and bolster Bush's justification for war. But unless he plays his cards right, Rove may have to suffer the torture of the damned with Oedipus, exiled to his own remote Colonus.

Another characteristic of tragic heroes is hubris, arrogance of the ignorant kind that inevitably masquerades as virtue. Young Oedipus trucks all over Thebes announcing punishment for the person responsible for the pestilence. Little did poor Oedipus know he himself was the cause. Bush made a similar pronouncement to the American public in 2003 when he said, "If somebody did leak classified information... we'll take the appropriate action." This supposedly honorable and virtuous summoning of the truth is startlingly similar to what Oedipus tells Creon: "But for myself will I banish the abomination... For I shall do all that is required. Either good fortune — if the gods will — will be shown to be ours, or we shall perish." In order to "banish the abomination," Oedipus turns to the Oracle and to Teiresias, the blind prophet. Bush turns to the grand jury.

This leads to the final aspect of Greek tragedy, hamartia, the recognition of the part one plays in one's own undoing. Just as we discover in Oedipus' very search for truth that he himself is the man at fault, Bush has unwittingly set in motion a kamikaze plan that is discrediting his own administration. For Oedipus, hamartia trickles out gradually. He is told early in the play that he is to blame for the pestilence. But it is not until the end of the play that Oedipus truly recognizes what he has done, and so goes the story of eye-piercing and self-exile.

It is hard to imagine Rove or Bush gouging out their own eyes, but hamartia over the Plame affair is developing just as slowly and steadily. Cooper — who, loosely defined, may be the modern-day Teiresias — has come forward with evidence that Rove leaked Plame's name to him. While Rove surely knew he leaked her identity, it is unclear if he expected Cooper to testify. As the investigation gets under way, more testimony is coming that will likely cause Rove and Bush to more fully recognize the egregiousness of their mistakes.

They may finally recognize, but will they pay for it? According to Aristotle, the best tragedies are bound by internal consistency; they possess a cause-effect chain that does not, in the final act, resort to cheap tricks or a deus ex machina. In Oedipus, no lowly messenger or somnolent member of the audience takes the fall for the king. When the evidence becomes overwhelming, Oedipus fesses up to his malfeasance and suffers the solitude of exile.

If anyone from the administration goes to jail for the Plame affair, it is not likely to be Rove. Armed with the support of the White House — equal in power to the Greek counsel of elders, or perhaps to the Olympian gods — and the larger right-wing political machine, Rove will never go to prison. More likely, the fall guy will be some lackey outside the inner circle, someone with very little political influence. So while the whole play has centered around Bush, Rove and Cooper, it is more likely some minor character will find himself in Colonus. Talk about a deus ex machina.

The American public is smarter than this. Even if Rove is exonerated in court, Americans are sure to grow increasingly suspicious of Bush's machinations. In fact, according to the latest polls, they already have: Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low of 42 percent, the lowest figure ever for a second-term president at this point. Even more striking, according to an ABC News poll 83 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans believe Rove should be fired if he was involved with the leak. More importantly, the Plame affair might just rouse Americans to begin reexamining other administration policies, like the war in Iraq or Bush's economics, and perhaps even sow the seeds for a liberal resurgence in 2008. In three years' time, maybe Americans can finally put Rove and his GOP machine on a one-way flight back to Texas — which is close enough to Colonus.

E-mail Joseph C. Krupnick at joekrupnick at gmail dot com.