August 2007: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove

"I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.” – Adlai E. Stevenson, Democratic Governor of Illinois 1949-1953, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations 1961-1965 and twice beaten by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower for President in 1952 and 1956.

In the year 405 B.C., Greek playwright Euripides died when he was mauled and killed by a pack of bloodthirsty dogs loosed upon him by one of his rivals. Enter into the lexicon the term, “every dog has his day”, the context of the term being that “even the lowliest person will at some time get revenge on his oppressor, no matter how powerful the man may be”. In the life and times of Karl Christian Rove, alternately referred to as “Bush’s brain”, “the architect” or “boy genius”, his own Greek tragedy is finally playing out in full glory in front of the American people. This month, the man who has been at the side of George W. Bush for 34 years and who has been Bush’s chief advisor since W won his first election as Texas governor in 1994, has announced that he will resign his position effective August 31st. In an expansive ceremony on the White House lawn, with the presidential helicopter sitting in the background, Bush lauded his political ally of half a lifetime. With Rove embroiled in bitter battles with the now Democratically controlled Congress over his Machiavellian involvement in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in 2003 and the firing last year of 9 Democratic U.S. District Attorney’s, it’s not surprising that Democrats are saying good riddance to W’s right hand man. Congress has issued subpoenas in Rove’s name, demanding he testify under oath to his involvement in these and other controversies, but he has been saved time and again by Bush exerting what is called executive privilege, a right he has under the Constitution to keep conversations in the White House free from disclosure. Bush is walking a delicate path, as Richard Nixon found out in 1974 when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that secret White House tapes be handed over to the Congress, which eventually resulted in Nixon’s resignation from office. We are not yet at that point and time will tell if the Democrats will intensify their hounding of Rove now that he is a regular citizen again. One thing is for sure, Rove is as shrewd a political operative as one can expect to find and be in no doubt that he hasn’t decided to ride off into the sunset unless he feels he will be adequately protected by executive privilege for the rest of his days.

Karl Rove has been involved in politics since 1968, when as an 18 year old he got involved in the Utah Republican Party. Two years later, and in perhaps the first glimpse at the kind of political dirty tricks that Rove would employ in the coming decades, he used a false identity to enter the campaign office of a Democrat running for the office of Illinois State Treasurer, stole 1000 sheets of campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign fliers promising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing” and distributed them at rock concerts and other events, with the effect of disrupting the campaign of the Democrat. Even though he was granted his draft deferment to serve in Vietnam due to him being classified as a University student, records now show that Rove was only a part time student before dropping out completely in 1972. In 1973, a serious of bizarre circumstances brought Karl Rove to the attention of the then Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC); George H.W. Bush, later Bush 41. Rove became a special assistant to Bush the elder in the early 1970’s on the RNC and thus was born the Rove-Bush relationship that would ultimately catapult Bush’s son, W, to the White House.

The relationship between Rove and Bush the elder has been rocky to say the least. He was fired by Bush 41 not once, but twice, first in 1980 during H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful bid for the White House and then again in 1992 when Bush senior was running for a second term as President, this time against Bill Clinton. Interestingly, he was fired on both occasions for planting and leaking information to the press, the second time to conservative columnist Robert Novak. They say coincidences never happen twice, so no one was really surprised when in 2003 the same Robert Novak told the world that the man who told him that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and said exactly that in his newspaper column; was none other than Karl Rove. Rove masterminded the election of George W Bush as governor of Texas in 1994 and 1998. Famously, one anecdote stands out from the ’94 election. Allegedly, Rove used pollsters to call voters to ask such things as whether people “…would be more or less inclined to vote for (incumbent) Governor Ann Richards if they knew her staff were dominated by lesbians”. While only circumstantial evidence links Rove to these activities, his history as a political operative leaves one with little doubt as to his modus operandi.

The chief reason Rove is hated by Democrats is because they believe that he is responsible for stealing the election from Al Gore in 2000. For anyone that is in any doubt about Karl Rove’s influence on the outcome of the 2000 election and the subsequent manipulation of the feelings and anxieties of the American people in a post 9/11 world, pick up a copy of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” at your local video store. The first time I saw it was on the day of its release in American cinemas in June 2004 in Modesto, California, at an 11am showing. The cinema was packed to the rafters and the movie received a 5 minute standing ovation. It is a damning indictment of how Karl Rove, Jeb Bush and the U.S. Supreme Court stole the election from Al Gore and in the words of one American political commentator, Chris Matthews, elevated a man to be Chief Executive who by himself hadn’t the intelligence to be President.

To quote another commonly used expression, Karl Rove’s chickens are now coming home to roost. Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff in the administration of Ronald Reagan recently commented on Rove, “The problem for Karl was that the art of campaigning required different talents than the art of governing. In the art of campaigning, it fundamentally has to do with defeating your opponent. The art of governing means you have to hold your opponent closely and continue to cultivate him or her for the next vote and the next vote and the next vote”. To quote Al Fournier of the Associated Press however, “…that was never Rove's style. His combative nature no doubt influenced what may have been Bush's biggest mistake -- using Sept. 11 to divide Democrats and Republicans rather than uniting the public behind a grand cause or shared sacrifice. He was the perfect strategist for an imperfect era, when polarization and the pursuit of power often trumps common sense and decency”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. In the end, every dog DOES have his day.