Karl Rove, senior Advisor to President Bush, and (some would say) the true power behind the Bush Administration, has announced he will step down on August 31 to, in his own words, "spend time with my family". Rove, love or hate him, has certainly been a controversial political figure during his time in power. Any thoughts on Rove, his resigning, the job he did, ect.?

Maybe the President was not Following his Advice?

Rove is an evil reptile.....hope he crawls back under the rock he came from..

Gee Davinci, that was a very articulate and well thought out comment. Too bad you can't seem to express yourself with out calling people names.

i thought he was using unusual restraint!!!

in fact he was almost bl8ant!!!

callin a spade a spade

Wait...isn't it a bad thing that hes stepping down!? Bush has the brains of well...a bush, so there needs to be someone thinking in the white house (even if its bad thinking) but still. Thats like all the zoo keepers letting the animals loose

'garden',

I have to agree with you that 'davinci' has called Mr. Rove 'an evil reptile', and that this comment, taken at face value, in this specific intance, would qualify under the 'calling names' label for most reasonable people. Furthermore, I would agree with the unspoken intent of your comment, that 'calling names' isn't one of our highest form of expressing thoughts and ideas.

But suggesting in an unqualified manner (is it strictly for the comment 'davinci' made in this post, or is it with every comments 'davinci' makes in every posts?!?!?)

... that 'davinci's comments for the lion share, and from a variety of postings, might not be articulate, nor well thought out (your sarcasm, eventhough not stated as such, was quite clear IMO), and that he can't express himself without calling people names (litteral),

... begs for you 'garden' to qualify, or otherwise retire these comments from this post.

You wouldn't want your own reputation for facts, thoroughness, and cardinal avoidance of any general, or loosely 'liberal' language to be affected by this, IMO, slip of yours. And believe me 'garden', neither would I want to see hard earned 'conservative' reputation impacted by such a loosely and sloppily 'liberal' choice of words here.

Karl Rove
Republican political strategist Karl Christian Rove, best known as President George W. Bush's top advisor, earned him the nickname "Bush's Brain."

Rove, appointed as Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the President by Bush during his first term, announced on August 13, 2007, that he will be resigning on August 31, 2007, allegedly to give more time to his family.[1]

Rove is "joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration. ... Among those who have left are White House counselor Dan Bartlett, budget director Rob Portman, chief White House attorney Harriet Miers, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, another deputy national security adviser who worked on Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced out immediately after the election as the unpopular war in Iraq dragged on."[2]

On April 19, 2006, Rove "gave up his responsibilities as chief policy coordinator, a position he assumed" in February 2005[3] "that strengthened his influence over matters ranging from homeland security and domestic policy to the economy and national security," Terence Hunt reported for the Associated Press.

Rove's responsibilites "shift[ed] to" Joel Kaplan, "who was promoted to deputy chief of staff from the No. 2 job in the White House budget office where he had served" under Joshua B. Bolten, who took over April 14, 2006, as Bush's Chief of Staff "with authority to do whatever he deemed necessary to stabilize Bush's presidency, and he has moved quickly with changes," Hunt wrote.


Well, note the word allegedly.

Secretly I think he has more dirt on his small finger than I had on my whole body in nearly 50 years.

I agree with Alex!
Call a spade a spade!!!

Invisable...I'm surprised Rove stayed as long as he did. Not because of any media friction, or pressure...You look at any past administration , Democrat or Republican, especially two term presidents (see Clinton) and there is always a large turn over of personnel. These jobs are very demanding, with incrediblely long hours (always on call etc)..."burn-out" has always been a major factor in white house employees leaving and finding higher paying jobs with less stress (like an easy consultants job). As for Rummy..he is well into his 70's and I don't blame him for getting out. The government doesn't pay that well

'invisible',

You're in the clear!!!

Well researched, documented an well thought out!!!

But above all, after close scrutiny of your closing comment:

"... Secretly I think he has more dirt on his small finger than I had on my whole body in nearly 50 years."

... you'll be happy to hear that the comment doesn't constitute 'name calling'. 100% clean bill of health!

By the way, expect to hear from 'gardenforge'. He always makes it a point to (pontificate) sorry, I meant CONGRATULATE good, consistent, well documented and thought out form.

I could think of worse names but that one will suffice for now!!!

Serchin4MyRedWine,

C'mon dear friend!!!

You mean their departure has nothing at all to do with the fact they became a shameful and inexcusable 'sinking ball and chain' to their administration ?!?!?

I need to hire you as my chief 'Spin Doctor'!!!
You are GOOD!!!


Note to a friend: "... but watch the amount of 'good' you put on any one subject. Too much of anything, however 'good', tends to turn one's stomach!!! Nuance and 'retenue' tends to balance things out.


Cheers 'search'!

Hey Fanta,

I made a mistake! I didn't really mean it! It was a 'freudian slip'!!!

You know, as much as I respect Gardenforge, but I don't give a fiddlers **** about what he has to say about my post

Voil..I would respectfully disagree....only a person persuaded and blinded by propadanda would believe Rove a "shameful and inexcusable 'sinking ball and chain' to their administration ?!?!?" The other side was so envious of his prowness and stratigies to win elections...they knew they had to sling the mud as usual...repeat things long enough regardless of its basis in truth and you will convince the ones who can never read between the lines or think for themselve.

Karl Rove played a key role in the selling of the Iraq War, which may help explain why he’s still bullish on the ultimate outcome, no matter how grim the news.
Web-Exclusive Commentary

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET Aug 13, 2007
Aug. 13, 2007 - In the summer of 2003, Karl Rove flew off to Bohemian Grove—the famed male-only retreat for the wealthy and powerful—where he had a revealing exchange in the Northern California woods about the state of affairs in Iraq. Spotting AOL founder James Kimsey, a big financial backer of President Bush who had just gotten back from Baghdad, Rove shouted out: “Hey Kimsey, it must have been wonderful to see the happy faces on all those liberated Iraqis!”

Kimsey was appalled. “Are you nuts?” he replied. He tried to tell the president’s political guru that the Iraqis he saw were sullen and resentful and that “if we don’t do something soon, all hell is going to break loose.”

But Rove wanted to hear nothing of it. “Nice talking to you,” Rove responded and walked away.

That exchange (recounted in the new afterword to the paperback edition of "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War," the book I co-wrote with David Corn, tells much about the brook-no-dissent ethos that Rove brought to the Bush White House. It also puts in some context Rove’s cheery comments this weekend to friendly journalist Paul Gigot, the editorial page director of the Wall Street Journal, as he announced his surprise resignation from the White House (and his plans to write a book on the Bush presidency). “Iraq will be in a better place,” as the surge continues, he said. As for President Bush’s political standing, “he will move back up in the polls.”

Maybe so. But from the day he went to work in the White House, Karl Rove has been Bush’s enabler as much as his master strategist–a key adviser who saw no subtleties or nuance, brushed aside internal qualms and ferociously went after critics who raised any questions about the president’s policies.

This was especially true of Iraq—the defining initiative of the Bush presidency—in which Rove’s behind-the-scenes role in the selling and spinning of the war was far more significant than is commonly known.

It is now barely remembered, but when the Bush White House first floated the idea of invading Iraq in 2002, public opinion polls showed most Americans had profound doubts. Even after the trauma of September 11, the public (including many Republicans) didn’t quite understand the rationale for launching a preemptive war to get rid of Saddam Hussein, who while a ruthless dictator had no plausible connection to the terror attacks. As House Majority Leader **** Armey bluntly put it that summer: “We Americans don’t make unprovoked attacks.”

At one point that year, Rove presented Bush with poll numbers showing the public misgivings about an Iraq invasion. “The public isn’t buying it,” he told the president in an Oval Office meeting. Bush exploded. “Don’t tell me about f—— polls,” Bush replied, according to a then-White House official who asked not to be identified talking about internal deliberations. “I don’t care what the polls say.” It was Rove’s job to move those numbers, the president made clear. “If there is a way to make the case more clearly, you tell me what it is,” Bush told Rove.

In fact, Rove had already begun to shape the political environment to help make the war possible. That January, he had given an important speech to the Republican National Committee where he signaled that the White House planned to politicize the terrorism issue in the upcoming fall election campaign. “We can go to the country on this issue,” Rove said, because the American people “trust the Republican Party to do a better job of … protecting Americans.’’ In June, Rove prepared a PowerPoint slide for GOP donors on his strategy for the 2002 races. “Focus on war,” it read in part.

But it was still necessary to link Iraq to the public’s legitimate security fears–and there again Rove played a key part, just as the president wanted. That summer, the former White House chief of staff Andrew Card created the White House Iraq Group – a collection of senior advisers, including Rove, who met regularly in the Situation Room to craft a public relations strategy that would play up pieces of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and supposed connections to international terrorism.

It was this group that seized on reports that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program – reports that were highly disputed and the subject of significant internal debate–and then approved the memorable phrase crafted by chief speechwriter Michael Gerson: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun— that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

The imagery of the nuclear mushroom cloud become a centerpiece of the White House’s sales campaign, first leaked anonymously to The New York Times, repeated on Sunday talk shows and finally enshrined in a major speech by Bush that October.

But perhaps even more significantly, Rove helped craft an ingenious political strategy that enabled the White House to win a resounding war resolution from a divided Congress that fall.

At first, the White House had spread the word that it might launch an invasion without even consulting Congress–a stance that infuriated Democrats (who at the time controlled the U.S. Senate by one vote). But Rove instinctively understood there was another way to achieve the desired result. Soon after Labor Day, Bush called in congressional leaders and essentially offered them a political deal: he would seek a congressional resolution authorizing him to go to war after all. But the White House would insist that the Congress had to vote before it adjourned that fall for the 2002 election campaign.

The rush to vote on a critical issue of war and peace troubled then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Why the rush? He pressed Bush at a Sept. 4, 2002, meeting. Daschle saw the hand of Rove—an attempt to box in Democrats and dare them to vote against a highly popular president on a big national-security issue. Vote against the resolution and Democrats would be hammered mercilessly by the White House during the election campaign for being “soft on terrorism,” just as Rove had suggested in his January speech.

“Daschle was right,” one former top White House official later told Corn and me in an interview for “Hubris.” The campaign calendar indeed drove the timing of the Iraq War vote. “The election was the anvil and the president was the hammer,” said the official, who declined to be identified publicly talking about internal matters.

And Rove was the architect—perhaps his most important contribution to the run-up to the war. In mid-October, Bush’s war resolution passed overwhelmingly with every Democrat who envisioned running for president (including John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton) voting to give the president the authority to launch an attack on Iraq.

After the March 2003 invasion, Rove continued to shape the White House spinning of news about Iraq—a role that was ultimately pivotal in the events that led to a criminal investigation of the White House. When Iraq War critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson went public with his claims that the White House had “twisted” prewar intelligence about Iraq, Rove was incensed, and he plotted ways to discredit and marginalize Wilson.

In a recent, little-noticed deposition, Susan Ralston, Rove’s former executive assistant, testified that Rove talked often that summer with the vice president’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, about Wilson and the role his wife may have played in sending him on a CIA mission to Africa to investigate allegations, later discredited, that Saddam’s regime was trying to procure uranium yellowcake for its nuclear weapons program.

When columnist Robert Novak called Rove about an upcoming column he was planning to write disclosing Valerie Wilson’s identity as a CIA officer, Rove confirmed this piece of classified intelligence to his old friend. “I heard that too,” he reportedly said. More importantly, he volunteered the same information about Wilson’s wife and her work for the CIA a few days later to Matt Cooper, then a reporter for Time magazine whom he barely knew.

Rove’s initial denial to the grand jury that he had talked to Cooper made him a prime target of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into who leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity to the news media. (Fitzgerald later concluded that, contrary to claims of White House defenders, Valerie Wilson was in fact a “covert” officer of the CIA at the time, and thereby covered by a law that made it a federal crime to disclose her identity. There was, however, no evidence that Rove and other White House aides who talked about her to the press knew this.)

In the course of five grand jury appearances, Rove corrected his earlier incorrect testimony and escaped an indictment from Fitzgerald. (Libby was not so lucky – he was convicted of perjury and obstruction charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Bush later commuted the prison sentence.) But Rove’s basic mind-set during the Wilson affair was revealingly displayed in a phone call he made to MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews right after the same July 2003 Bohemian Grove retreat where he had encountered Kimsey. (Matthews had also attended the retreat.)

As Matthews later described the conversation to colleagues, Rove was “revved up” over the Wilson controversy. He considered it part of a political war and as far as he was concerned, Valerie Wilson was a full-fledged combatant on the other side. The Wilsons “were trying to screw the White House so the White House was going to screw them back,” he told Matthews. After Matthews finished talking to Rove, he called Joe Wilson and, according to Wilson, said: “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game’.” (In a statement today after Rove’s resignation, Joe Wilson said: “This sordid tale of compromising national security to cover up and distract from the false rationale for the invasion of Iraq will forever remain in history a black mark on the Bush presidency.”)

While the probe continued, Rove largely remained in the background on the Iraq War until June 2006, when he finally got the word that Fitzgerald was not going to indict him. Once freed of the fear of criminal prosecution, he immediately returned to the fray with a polarizing, defining speech before a GOP audience in New Hampshire. At the time, news out of Iraq was unrelentingly bleak: U.S. casualties and sectarian violence was up and even U.S. military commanders were expressing private doubts that the mission could succeed.

But Rove would brook no doubts. He returned to the same political playbook he had honed so successfully four years earlier. He tore into Democratic critics of the war such as John Kerry and John Murtha as “cut-and-run” men. “They are ready to give the green light to go to war,” Rove said of Kerry and Murtha, “but when it gets tough, and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party’s old pattern of cutting and running. They may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be with you for the last, tough battles.

Then Rove capped his remarks with a rousing defense of the war he had worked so hard to sell. “We were absolutely right to remove [Saddam] from power and we have no excuses to make for it,” he said.

As Rove now prepares to head back to Texas and write his memoirs of the Bush presidency, it is fairly certain that the one thing he won’t offer readers are excuses—or regrets. No matter what the news out of Iraq.

Karl Rove, one of the most influential presidential advisers in modern US history, who will step down later this month
Sam Knight

Karl Christian Rove, the most influential presidential strategist in modern American history, was born in Denver, Colorado, on Christmas Day, 1950.

His family life was traumatic. On his 19th birthday, his father, a geologist, walked out of the family home in Sparks, Utah, and never came back. Then the nerdy, wonkish student found out that his father wasn't even his father. He dropped out of college. Mr Rove's mother committed suicide 12 years later.

By this point, the myth was made. Aged just 22, Mr Rove became a footnote in the Watergate scandal when The Washington Post reported that he was among a group Republican strategists who were travelling the country, advising candidates on the subtler, rougher elements of the local campaign.

He had first turned heads as a 19-year-old volunteer in 1970, when he was accused of stealing Democratic stationery to invite a group of homeless people and alcoholics to an opponent's fundraiser, and over the next 35 years Mr Rove's rivals were hit by a torrent of bad luck and unfortunate rumours, his reputation growing all the time.
Related Links

* Rove quits as Bush aide in tearful farewell

* Commentary: Democrats may miss Rove as much as Bush

* Bush aides in 'snooping' case

Masterminding President Bush's two election victories and the simultaneous expansion of the Republicans' control of the three branches of the US Government from 2000 to 2004, earned Mr Rove the nicknames "Bush's brain" and "the architect" but it was another sobriquet, "turd blossom", that may last the longest. The process by which a flower grows from a cowpat seemed to suit Mr Rove and he never objected to the name.

As James Moore and Wayne Slater wrote in their biography, Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, his political career produced a series of “unexpected, campaign-shaping events” that were difficult to trace, even harder to verify, but definitely smelly. “It became his motif. There is no crime, just a victim. Evidence is gone before acquiring substance," they wrote.

The list is infamous. In 1994, a year after Mr Rove took charge charge of George Bush's political career in Texas, the state's Democratic Governor, Anne Richards, was rumoured to be a lesbian. Voters started receiving supposed polling phone calls — a tactic later described as "push-polling"— that asked: "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if you knew her staff is dominated by lesbians?"

John McCain was the next Bush opponent to come unstuck. The Vietnam veteran's "Straight Talk Express", which made him an unexpected frontrunner in the 2000 primary elections, was suddenly and mysteriously derailed by questions that he had a black child from an extra-marital affair.

Four years later, another Vietnam hero, John Kerry, was simply no match for the stream of so-called "attack ads" from a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that questioned his war record.

Despite the rough-house tactics that have accompanied his candidates' successes, many of Mr Rove's innovations were assiduously copied by his opponents: from the direct mailing of voters, to the refined science of redrawing political districts to bringing so-called "value" issues to centre of political debate.

Few disputed his personal warmth. As John Dilulio — the first Bush appointee to resign in 2001— wrote in the letter to Esquire magazine that lifted the lid on the Rove phenomenon: "Some in the press view Karl as some sort of prince of darkness; actually, he is basically a nice and good-humored man."

Over the last 18 months, Mr Rove's attempts to stay out sight were countered by an equally vigorous campaign, mounted at times by his Democrat opponents, at others by federal prosecutors, to strip him of his mystery.

The Jack Abramoff affair. The mid-term elections defeat. The CIA spy leak. The firing of federal prosecutors. Mr Rove's name was dragged into a series of Republican scandals, but his precise role and responsibilities never revealed — and not without people trying to find out.

He was questioned in front of a grand jury five times before prosecutors decided not to charge him in the CIA leak case. During the trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President **** Cheney's chief of staff, who was eventually jailed for obstructing the investigaton, lawyers tried to pin the blame on Mr Rove but, as the Washington Post reported, "his job was never fully explained. His influence was never clearly defined".

It was the same in the attempt to get to the bottom of firing of eight federal prosecutors by the Bush administration last year. As the inconsistent US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has been dragged back and forth at congressional hearings, the Democrats have sought the head of Mr Rove. When he was ordered to appear before the Judiciary Committee last month, Mr Bush intervened to block his testimony.

During the Jack Abramoff affair, the disgraced lobbyist claimed to have the ear of Mr Rove — his assistant, after all, had once been Mr Rove's — but nothing was ever proved and Abramoff was imprisoned for six years.

"I just think it's time," he said, explaining his decision to step down now to spend more time with his second wife, Darby, and son. By leaving now, Mr Rove leaves on his own terms, the mystery intact.


I admit, it's all copy and paste, but interesting all the same

Thats ok Voil, no apology needed.
You know me, keep it simple and crude. I do not have the elegant way with words that you exhibit on a regular bases!!

If only I could improve to your level of brillance with the human language.

Ahhh, but alas the meaning is generally the same even if the route is rougher! In this case I would think one compliments the other in a very unique way!

All I can say is that if you idolize people like Karl Rove, you'll always get people like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. A real statesman wouldn't need or want the services of McCarthyites like Atwood or Rove.

-Kerry O.