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Yvl
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 Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:41 am Post subject: Karl Rove quits |
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WASHINGTON -- Top White House strategist Karl Rove announced Monday he is resigning as George W. Bush's chief political operative, ending a tumultuous career that earned him a reputation for being everything from the U.S. president's "brain" to the administration's central nervous system.
Loved and loathed, particularly by Democrats, the fiercely partisan Republican political guru was never far from controversy.
His influence as an unelected political and policy adviser to the president cannot be overstated, according to Washington insiders.
Indeed, his decision to leave the White House at the end of the month, divulged in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, caught many by surprise, largely because few political junkies thought the ever-loyal Rove would leave Washington before Bush's presidency ends in January, 2009.
Democrats, meanwhile, are robbed of a favourite punching bag in the run-up to the 2008 presidential vote. Indeed, within hours of his resignation hitting the airwaves and the Internet, Democrat were accusing him of trying to avoid congressional scrutiny over whether, for example, he had a hand in firing nine U.S. prosecutors for allegedly partisan purposes.
Rove anticipated the criticism. "I am not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob," he told The Journal.
His departure is, however, another reminder that Bush's presidency is in its final phase. "I just think it's time," Rove said.
He said he plans to take life easy in his adopted home of Texas, spend more time with his wife and son, write a book, and possibly explore teaching. But few who know Rove think he's capable of completely sitting out the race for the presidency in 2008, despite claims he's done with political consulting.
Rove's decision to get out now was likely pushed in part by chief of staff Joshua Bolten's edict that anybody staying beyond Labour Day would be expected to stay through the rest of Bush's term. Among those already out the door are budget director Rob Portman and presidential counsellor Dan Bartlett.
Still, Bush and Rove seemed joined at the hip. It was Bush himself who gave Rove one of his most quoted nicknames -- The Architect -- for engineering Bush's string of election victories as governor of Texas and twice as U.S. president.
Their friendship and political partnership dates back 34 years, and both were near tears as they talked to reporters before Bush and his wife boarded Air Force One to spend time at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"I am grateful to have been a witness to history. It has been the joy and the honour of a lifetime," an emotional Rove said after an equally emotional Bush had described him as a "dear friend" and tireless political companion.
"I'll be on the road behind you here a little bit," Bush said, referring to his own scheduled departure in 17 months.
Dubbed "Bush's brain" by presidential detractors who belittled Bush's political acumen and intellectual strength, Rove was bent from the beginning on using his political smarts to make the Republican party the ascendant party in America.
He did so largely by harnessing the votes of conservative Christians to propel Bush to the White House in 2000, and to help expand the Republican presence in the U.S. Congress in 2002 and 2004. He also ordered Republicans to use every chance to paint Democrats as soft on terrorism after 9/11, and took attack dog politics to new lows.
But by 2006, Rove had lost some of his magic.
With Bush's popularity spiralling downward along with support for the war in Iraq, the Democrats regained control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Two domestic agenda items closely tied to Rove also bit the dust -- reforming the social security system and revamping the country's immigration laws.
Rove also became embroiled in the special investigation into who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose husband criticized the Bush administration's handling of intelligence in the days leading up to the Iraq war. Although called several times to testify before the grand jury, Rove was never indicted.
On his reputation as the administration's central nervous system, Rove blew it off as a huge exaggeration.
"It's a myth," he told The Journal. "I read about some of the things that I am suppose to have done, and I have to try not to laugh."
Still, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, writing on the popular website politico.com, described Rove as one of the most influential and controversial political figures in living memory.
"The verdict on his legacy will be similarly conflicted," they said. "He can claim credit for political victories of historic proportions, but also stands accused of policy failures and a strategy of divisiveness.
"Rove will soon be gone, but it will be a long time before he is forgotten." |
Now that there's pretty big news.
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Sophita
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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Unexpected, yet unsurprising.
Rove's probably going to be forever tainted as the brainiac in Bush's corner.
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Starslasher
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| Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 7:00 am Post subject: |
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I didn't catch up with this story, other than seeing mention of this by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I really didn't see anyhting too special in him from the other people in the Bush administration like Rumsfeld or Cheney. :|
I find it a bit interesting to see it begin about the conflict between the Republicans and Democrats, even though it's not surprising at all. I think that the past 7 years might have had the biggest tension between the two parties in U.S history, but i might be wrong on this.
I find it too harsh to call anyone "Bush's brains", what a horrible insult!
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Yvl
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| Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:10 am Post subject: |
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I find it too harsh to call anyone "Bush's brains", what a horrible insult!
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That would kinda be the point. Not too many people like Bush.
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retrospect.
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| Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 10:49 am Post subject: |
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NO! Not MC Rove!
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Tullaryx
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| Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:07 am Post subject: |
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Despite what the Bush Administration has done right or wrong these past 7 or so years, I can be objective enough to say that Karl Rove was one of the smartest and most ruthless political figures of the last 15 or so years. It helps that he was mentored by another political figure who made a barely B-movie actor become one of the most important Presidents (love him or hate him he was important and influential) of the last half-century in Ronald Reagan. I am talking about the late Lee Atwater.
Rove was very adept in taking the strenghts of whichever Republican candidate he was advising and selling it to the general populace. While his candidates were widely disregarded and reviled by the far-left and liberal-wing of the Democrats, Rove was able to convince enough independents, moderate GOP voters and even some of the more hawkish Democrats to vote for his people.
What Rove failed to do was to help Bush follow-through on the promise to reach across party lines and run an administration which relied less on the small, albeit powerful hardliners in the GOP, and more on the center. He advised Bush with policies which became divisive early on in Bush's presidential career that when it came time to pass policies that were actually socially moderate like a less stringent and brutal Immigration Bill it was soundly defeated by people on both sides of the aisle.
Instead of remaining behind the scenes like he did during Bush's Texas gubernatorial terms and the early years of Bush's first Presidential term, Rove began to believe his own press and legend and became too disconnected from the general population's anger and dismissal of all thing's Bush.
In the end, even hardcore Republican senators and voters have begun to see Rove as part of Bush's inability to get anything done in the White House. While he is gone at the end of the month from the White House, I wouldn't be surprised if he becomes an unofficial political consultant for whichever Republican candidate wins it's party's Presidential nomination for the 2008 election. I don't think the U.S. political scene has seen the last of Karl Rove.
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retrospect.
Cosby You! Black Entertainer
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Acheron
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| Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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I don't mean to call you out on this but I thought a while ago we were discouraged from posting news article without following it with our own opinion on the story. This is a good topic and all but I was under the impression that we were supposed to say something more than "this is a news story". Sorry to call you out on this but I'll get to the point.
I think Rove had a big impact on the current administration. I'd be surprised to see anymore power moves by the administration like we'd seen in the past as I always viewed Rove as the motivator for the decider. With his influence gone I don't think the White House will be making any big changes in government leading into the election. The Republican Party is disliked enough anyways so I imagine they couldn't risk losing anymore votes.
Not to say that Rove is responsible for the poor reception of many of the White House's actions though. I respect Karl Rove for much of what he did. He took many neccesary actions and got it all blamed on Bush. In seriousness though, I do think he is a very intelligent man and did many positive things during his time in office.
MC Rove for life. |
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Tullaryx
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| Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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Well, if anyone was awake this past sunday morning, Rove was in all the political news shows on NBCA, CBS, ABC and Fox. They spoke of his time as Deputy Chief of Staff under Bush and his impact on national policy and any perceived success and/or failures while part of the inner circle. He pretty much put all the blame on others for any failures the administration and the GOP made the past 3-4 years on others. His excuse had been that he was just doing what he was told and had no hand in any sort of policy making.
This tells me that even Rove knows that the last 18 months of Bush's final term will be a lame-duck session where the Executive Branch will be handcuffed by an administration with little or no influence or clout even within its own hardcore group of supporters. Rove is still believing that he did nothing wrong and that it's pretty much the bosses he reported to that made the mistakes. I'm going to guess that years from now when the Bush administration's legacy is examined in better detail he'll go from the Dark Genius of Texas who got a president elected twice despite not being popular to just another failure of divisive and dogmatic politicking.
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Alcon
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| Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:14 am Post subject: |
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I respectfully disagree with the assessment of Karl Rove as some sort of infallible electoral genius. Frankly, I think he is a deeply intelligent man. But deeply intelligent men are a dime a dozen in politics. And by any standard of a presidential-level political adviser, I don't think Rove was particularly hot stuff. It's unfair to pin the Iraq invasion on him. Iraq was clearly his to sell, but for that, he was a shill man, which is not really his primary job.
Before the Bush administration, Rove had a pretty thoroughly mediocre record. He won some, he lost some. He made the astoundingly harebrained mistake of sending Bush to California and New Jersey to chase shadows during the final weeks of the 2000 campaign. Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman and Al Gore were practically living out of a pied-à-terre in Fort Lauderdale. Karl Rove alone could have easily lost that election for Bush, because he drank his own Kool-Aid and thought he could eke out wins in states to make him a legend. His own polling was probably telling him something very different.
I have trouble thinking of a political honcho who made such a simplistic electoral mistake as a genius for the ages. In reality, I think Rove's gifted. But I also think he gets carried away by the same cult of personality that led Bush to make such "loyalty" appointments as Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales. Cronyism gets lucky sometimes - I think Rove was such a case, but I don't think history will judge him as being as important as some now think.
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