Rubin and Rove:
The last month has brought two of the best magazine profiles I’ve ever read to my attention.
First up, The Atlantic did an analysis of Karl Rove called "The Rove Presidency" (sadly only the first few graphs available to non-subscribers. I got it from the library after hearing about it on Left, Right and Center) which gets exactly why Karl Rove seemed invincible 3 years ago and now may be the personification of the Bush administrations failures and eventual middling place in history.
The New York Times Magazine last week devoted their cover (again behind a pay wall. My apologies) to record producer Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Records, mastermind behind the Aerosmith/Run D.M.C "Walk This Way" recording and the newly appointed president of Columbia Records. Journalist Lynn Hirschberg reports, with little hesitation that Rubin has been charged with bringing the label into the 21st century, realigning a business model fundamentally broken or has he puts it bluntly "saving the music industry from itself."
A great profile expands what you already know and takes you somewhere unfamiliar. Until reading "The Rove Presidency", I pretty much knew Karl Rove was cunning yet short-sighted, a brilliant campaigner who couldn’t apply the same strengths to governing. But I figured he was mostly in the game for the thrill of winning and had simply chosen the Republicans as his team rather than guardians of his values. Rubin I knew was a musician with a golden set of ears and a penchant for looking past prevailing cultural boundaries but as a beneficiary of the system, I didn’t see him as eager to upset it but rather in the mold of a producer-gone-suit like Jimmy Iovine.
Turns out, Rove is quite a student of history and saw his run with GW as similar to the 1896 election of William McKinley which ushered in 30 years of Republican rule. He wasn’t put trying to win but trying to win for the ages, both with party and policy. In fact, the article submits that Rove’s insistence on participating in policy decisions (Social Security his passion) may have spelled doom for Bush since getting laws passed and winning elections are two very different birds.
Rubin isn’t taking the Columbia post as a way of keeping afloat a sinking ship but a personal challenge of see if the deserves to be sailing at all. He’s aware that the major record label system is creaky and outmoded and that change will take time. "We may just have to be content to be the best dinosaur" he said plainly. Dousing the inferno of file sharing isn’t mentioned once.
What a pleasure it was reading both these pieces! If you can find them, do.