August 14, 2007
Final Verdict On Rove May Never Come
The passage of time has a way of bringing legends back down to earth. But when you're as inscrutable, provocative and, yes, mythic a figure as Karl Rove, the process by which history judges will probably meet no end.
Since Sunday's surprise announcement that he would resign, the man who essentially got George W. Bush to the White House has been besieged by postmortems that seek to take him down a peg. The purported evidence most frequently on offer is that Rove was unable to secure for Republicans control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.
Opines the Washington Post: Rove "should be judged on his own terms: as the would-be architect of a long-lasting Republican majority.... The GOP's wipeout in 2006 would suggest that Mr. Rove did not achieve this goal, notwithstanding his brave parting words about Republican victory in 2008."
Fair enough. But there's one very important point here that isn't lost on longtime Rove observers: He's always worked for Bush, not the other way around. The confluence of events that led to the midterm defeat -- deafness on the Iraq war, a base discontented after scandal and betrayal -- originated from the Oval Office and Capitol Hill, not the mind of one political consultant, as well-placed and influential as he was.
In a Q&A with Newsweek, Wayne Slater, who's enjoyed a bird's-eye view of Bush's evolution from aimless scion to president of the United States, argued that the meeting of the two men was kismet.
Rove "saw in Bush everything that he was not. And he also saw that together they would be a very formidable political force," said Slater, co-author of one of the most authoritative books on Bush and Rove and now senior political correspondent for the Dallas Morning News.
The "genius" label often assigned to Rove is now in dispute. The News' editorial board faults Rove with failing to understand that his divide-and-conquer campaign tactics wouldn't translate into an effective governing strategy. Divisiveness may have won Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004, but that disease soon spread to the GOP's own ranks. Don't expect any parades honoring Rove as he heads back to Texas for good at the end of the month.
There's an argument to be made that what Democrats and Republicans alike mistook for "political genius" was actually just a willingness to go for the jugular without so much as a blink. Rove's reputation among political insiders is that of an expert slanderer who lays waste to the other guy without getting caught. Having vaulted to the head of the College Republicans at the age of 22 (without actually graduating from college), Rove trained his acolytes in underhanded campaign tactics on behalf of Richard Nixon, the Washington Post famously reported at the time.
Rove's reputation as Dark Lord of campaign politics gradually built over the years. In a 2005 interview, Slater said that Rove was on several occasions wrongly blamed for attacks on the other guy, but that was because he actually was guilty so much of the time.
On Monday, Democrats were giddy to see Rove go, if a little upset that they were unable to force him out earlier.
"Brilliant yes. Bold, without a doubt. A complete and utter failure who left his country and his movement weaker than he found it? Yep," wrote NDN's Simon Rosenberg. "Eventually, perhaps, disgraced," he concluded. Rove "was good at winning elections, but not at much else," wrote Political Animal's Kevin Drum.
Democrats in Congress, still trying to get their mojo back after a rocky return to the seat of legislative power, are resolving not to let up on their investigations into Rove's alleged misdeeds. But he really has no incentive to comply with a congressional subpoena on his testimony in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
(It should be noted that the judiciary panels might have a more legitimate case for compelling Rove's testimony if their focus were to turn on the RNC's vote-caging plan, which seems to have the mark of Rove all over it. But the topic isn't coming up much in the hearings, which are mostly trained on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.)
The Houston Chronicle doesn't think Rove is going away anytime soon. That's a fair bet; it's difficult to see how the man who invented the game as we now know it could possibly bench himself in 2008.
Escaping the speculative chatter about Rove's future in the coming days won't be easy. Here's a good reason to try, though. In 2004, Rove pitted independents and centrists against anti-war Democrats after effectively painting the latter as unpatriotic surrender monkeys. The New Yorker's man in Baghdad, George Packer, fears the politicization of the war may be what dooms it:
The Rove approach to governing helped lose Iraq. That may be the most enduring legacy of this supposed political genius.
Posted at 1:01 PM
Posted to:
Alberto Gonzales, Attorney Scandal, Bush Administration, Campaigns, Congress, Iraq, Karl Rove, Middle East, President Bush, WH 2008
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