Spinner EmeritusKarl Rove's next job.
By John DickersonUpdated Monday, Aug. 13, 2007, at 1:21 PM ETJohn Dickerson assesses the Web video efforts of GOP presidential candidates in this Slate V video.
While everyone was watching the public cage match, Rove and the White House political office were using the powers of the executive branch to gain political advantage in every aspect of the government from the Justice Department to the GSA.
The result, along with an unpopular war, is that the Republican Party is now in as deep a funk as it has been since Watergate. Rove wanted to reshape the national political landscape and he did: It now looks like something from a Mad Max film. "Many of us thought we would have helped solve the problem of polarization," Matthew Dowd, who worked closely with Rove for both presidential campaigns, wrote in Texas Monthly, but "we're in an even more polarized place." Bush loyalists looking to pinpoint Rove's role in the difference between the Texas and Washington years note that in Texas, Rove was merely a consultant to Gov. Bush. In Washington, he was physically in the White House, with his hands directly on the levers of policy-making.
Though Rove has not spent much time on television spinning for the administration, he is good at offering live audiences seemingly plausible explanations for the administration's, er, temporary troubles. At a recent Aspen Institute forum, he had a largely liberal audience applauding after he charmed the crowd with a series of self-deprecating jokes. Standing in line to get coffee, on his way to the venue in the heart of liberal territory, he said he heard the owner tell a patron that Karl Rove was there. "I'd like to slug that son of a bitch," said the patron. "Well he's right behind you," said the owner. To the audience laughter Rove responded: "I knew I was getting close to Aspen." At the same venue, Rove quietly began the task of rewriting the story of his involvement in the Valerie Plame outing by editing the nature of his conversation with my former colleague Matt Cooper.
Even as he departed, Rove was predicting Democratic disaster around the corner.
In his Wall Street Journal interview, he promises that the debate over the FISA court will split the party and damage it with the American people. (He said that very same issue would help Republicans keep the majority in Congress in the 2006 elections.) But despite his overreaching miscalculations, conservatives still crave tactical instruction from a man who shares their core beliefs, their thirst for confrontation, and whom they still consider a genius.
Rove can be expected to paint a heroic self-portrait in the memoir he is now said to be writing. It seems unlikely he'll fare as well in the accounts of his colleagues. Though Rove sometimes drew up reading lists for lower-level staffers or gave them advice on places to go on vacation in Texas, he will be better remembered for intermittently exploding into purple-faced rages. To talk off-the-record to senior White House aides over the years about their constant, relentless battles with Rove was like listening in on marriage counseling. Many people inside and outside the White House feared Rove, a number of them truly admired him (professionally and personally), but of very few can it be said that they ever trusted him.
In retirement, Rove will have a willing audience among his party's faithful. Though the president has lost his shine among some die-hard conservatives, Rove largely hasn't—despite being the architect of the push for comprehensive immigration reform. Even after the 2006 losses, conservatives were saying it wasn't Rove's fault, but the fault of a corrupt, confused GOP congressional leadership. Conservatives also need Rove to survive as a guru. While Republicans are momentarily depressed, it doesn't come from a fundamental conundrum about their party's core beliefs. Many just think that circumstances, a poorly managed war, and a distracted president harmed the execution of GOP policy.
John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at . Follow him on Twitter. Photograph of Karl Rove on the Slate home page by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images. Photograph of Karl Rove above by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.
Remarks from the Fray:
Many liberals (and progressives and centrists, too) thought there couldn't be anything worse than having John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Now, those same people look back on the Ashcroft AG days as the halcyon period in Bush's Justice Department.
Just because Rove is leaving, do not think that there will be a new tone. No one knows who his replacement is.
--DeaH
(To reply, click here.)
This wasn't news this was an op-ed piece promoting liberal ideals. I am moderate in my beliefs, but come on! Comments like "Rove will also apparently regrow his hair and play for the Cowboys." In response to his belief that the Republicans will win the White House in 08?? I think they will.
Look at the facts:
1.) Iraq is going better than expected. Lowest death count since the invasion. Things will be even better by the 08 elections. Ask anyone who has been there recently!
2.) Bush has higher approvals then the Dem's in Cogress. By the way what have they done since we put them their? Raised the minimum wage? BIG DEAL
Thus: It seems that the Republicans are more apt at running our country and will probably receive my vote. In the meantime keep the bias for the op-ed pieces.
--Chitown2277
(To reply, click here.)
What is it about Rove that drives lefties insane? Architect of 2 election victories? Oh, yes. A republican majority? Maybe, but the Democrats were slipping for a while before that. That nasty partisan divide? It was growing long before Rove arrived. He may have sharpened it, but he sure as hell wasn't the only one whiling away with a sharpening stone. Bush's unpopularity? Doubtful. Bush's unpopularity is directly related to his handling of Katrina, and to the Iraq war, and I doubt very much Rove can be blamed for that.
In the end, Rove was just a political advisor who, at least for a time, had the pulse of narrow majority. In the end, only bush determines his own legacy.
--Reprobate
(To reply, click here.)
I can hardly wait for Karl Rove's book to come out. Just imagine what kind of revisionist history the Sultan of Spin will write when the subject matter is himself. Im sure Rumpelstiltskin himself would be proud of Karl's ability to spin turdblossoms into gold.
This man has got to be the most polarizing figure to ever hold an office at the Whitehouse. Nearly every scandal and shenanigan emanating from the Bush White House has had Karl's slimy fingerprints all over it.
I'm glad to see the man go. He exemplifies the "party before country" politico. I suppose as a "political advisor" he was good at his job, too good, to the detriment of the country.
President Bush claimed he was a "uniter". Bush should have checked with Karl Rove before he made that statement. Rove didn't sign on to the "uniter" platform, and never intended to advise President Bush in such a way to where he would be viewed as such.
Like so many other political figures that got embroiled in scandal during the current Bush administration, Republicans defended Rove to the end, not because they believe he was good for the country, but because the Democrats didn't like him. For some reason that was a good enough reason to keep him around.
Therein lies the problem with Karl Rove. Rove is the main cause, and the poster boy for the current divide in this country. His departure, (hopefully to never return) is a good first step to start the healing process this country has been waiting for.
--NorCal
(To reply, click here.)
I'm not sure the last paragraph follows from the rest of the column. As the column notes, Rove perfected the "politics of conflict and division." The legacy is a bitterly divided country, and one of the most feckless administrations in history. Yet, the last paragraph states: "Conservatives also need Rove to survive as a guru. While Republicans are momentarily depressed, it doesn't come from a fundamental conundrum about their party's core beliefs." If this is true it must mean that Republicans have no hope of winning if they merely run positive campaigns extolling conservative policies - they must also stoke fear and division by slandering half of America as "America-haters" and criminal-lovers and all the other fetid and false BS. Unfortunately, this may be true (or maybe, when Mr. Dickerson speaks of the "party's core beliefs", he includes the core belief that liberals are inherently evil people). Even so, an optimist might say that Rove's departure gives Republicans and conservatives a chance to determine whether they be a viable political party without the God, guns and gays strategy perfected by Rove.
--Colonel Truth
(To reply, click here.)
(8/14)
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Remarks from the Fray:
Many liberals (and progressives and centrists, too) thought there couldn't be anything worse than having John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Now, those same people look back on the Ashcroft AG days as the halcyon period in Bush's Justice Department.
Just because Rove is leaving, do not think that there will be a new tone. No one knows who his replacement is.
--DeaH
(To reply, click here.)
This wasn't news this was an op-ed piece promoting liberal ideals. I am moderate in my beliefs, but come on! Comments like "Rove will also apparently regrow his hair and play for the Cowboys." In response to his belief that the Republicans will win the White House in 08?? I think they will.
Look at the facts:
1.) Iraq is going better than expected. Lowest death count since the invasion. Things will be even better by the 08 elections. Ask anyone who has been there recently!
2.) Bush has higher approvals then the Dem's in Cogress. By the way what have they done since we put them their? Raised the minimum wage? BIG DEAL
Thus: It seems that the Republicans are more apt at running our country and will probably receive my vote. In the meantime keep the bias for the op-ed pieces.
--Chitown2277
(To reply, click here.)
What is it about Rove that drives lefties insane? Architect of 2 election victories? Oh, yes. A republican majority? Maybe, but the Democrats were slipping for a while before that. That nasty partisan divide? It was growing long before Rove arrived. He may have sharpened it, but he sure as hell wasn't the only one whiling away with a sharpening stone. Bush's unpopularity? Doubtful. Bush's unpopularity is directly related to his handling of Katrina, and to the Iraq war, and I doubt very much Rove can be blamed for that.
In the end, Rove was just a political advisor who, at least for a time, had the pulse of narrow majority. In the end, only bush determines his own legacy.
--Reprobate
(To reply, click here.)
I can hardly wait for Karl Rove's book to come out. Just imagine what kind of revisionist history the Sultan of Spin will write when the subject matter is himself. Im sure Rumpelstiltskin himself would be proud of Karl's ability to spin turdblossoms into gold.
This man has got to be the most polarizing figure to ever hold an office at the Whitehouse. Nearly every scandal and shenanigan emanating from the Bush White House has had Karl's slimy fingerprints all over it.
I'm glad to see the man go. He exemplifies the "party before country" politico. I suppose as a "political advisor" he was good at his job, too good, to the detriment of the country.
President Bush claimed he was a "uniter". Bush should have checked with Karl Rove before he made that statement. Rove didn't sign on to the "uniter" platform, and never intended to advise President Bush in such a way to where he would be viewed as such.
Like so many other political figures that got embroiled in scandal during the current Bush administration, Republicans defended Rove to the end, not because they believe he was good for the country, but because the Democrats didn't like him. For some reason that was a good enough reason to keep him around.
Therein lies the problem with Karl Rove. Rove is the main cause, and the poster boy for the current divide in this country. His departure, (hopefully to never return) is a good first step to start the healing process this country has been waiting for.
--NorCal
(To reply, click here.)
I'm not sure the last paragraph follows from the rest of the column. As the column notes, Rove perfected the "politics of conflict and division." The legacy is a bitterly divided country, and one of the most feckless administrations in history. Yet, the last paragraph states: "Conservatives also need Rove to survive as a guru. While Republicans are momentarily depressed, it doesn't come from a fundamental conundrum about their party's core beliefs." If this is true it must mean that Republicans have no hope of winning if they merely run positive campaigns extolling conservative policies - they must also stoke fear and division by slandering half of America as "America-haters" and criminal-lovers and all the other fetid and false BS. Unfortunately, this may be true (or maybe, when Mr. Dickerson speaks of the "party's core beliefs", he includes the core belief that liberals are inherently evil people). Even so, an optimist might say that Rove's departure gives Republicans and conservatives a chance to determine whether they be a viable political party without the God, guns and gays strategy perfected by Rove.
--Colonel Truth
(To reply, click here.)
(8/14)