KARL ROVE: THE BUSH DYNASTY’S RASPUTIN

[RedCountry]

Quick, name the biggest force to hit politics in the past century. The New Deal? The Cold War? Extremist terrorism?

 

How about a stout, bespectacled Texan named Karl Rove.

 

Never heard of Rove? Neither have most Americans. (In fact, many don’t even know what he looks like, so here’s a photo.) As a senior White House staffer Rove is a rare breed—a lurker, content to hang back in the shadows while Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell dominate the media. But Rove’s anonymity belies his status; he is, by many accounts, the most powerful person in America.

 

So who exactly is this man, and how did he come to exert such near-tidal influence on Washington?

 

Unlike most of his political compatriots, Karl Rove didn’t have the benefit of pedigree. He grew up following his geologist father up and down the Rocky Mountains. But what he lacked in social prestige, Rove made up for in drive. At age nine, he was a sworn Nixon supporter—his mind already focused on the politics that would become his life’s obsession.

 

Rove’s real gift however, a penchant for political trickery, didn’t become apparent until his teenage years, when he happened to be in Illinois while a particularly tight race for state treasurer was raging. According to the Guardian, Rove showed up at the campaign headquarters of Democratic candidate Alan Dixon, and, unnoticed by staff, pocketed a sheaf of letterhead.

 

Soon afterward, the stationary began turning up in Chicago’s red light district, bearing invitations for “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing.” The promised locale of this debauchery: candidate Dixon’s campaign headquarters, where hundreds of less than desirable characters converged during a gala reception. Dixon was embarrassed, although he still won the election.

 

But it wasn’t long until Rove’s cunning would pay dividends. In 1973, while attending the University of Utah, he ran against Robert Edgeworth for the chairmanship of the College Republicans. Rather than face the popular Edgeworth head-on, Rove devised an ingenious approach: he challenged his opponent’s every campaign move on technical grounds.

 

With a keen understanding of politicking, Rove waged a war of attrition against Edgeworth’s campaign team—causing the disqualification of candidate after candidate on minor technicalities. In the end the Republican National Committee had no choice but to name Rove the election’s victor.

 

The shrewd campaign got Rove noticed by the Republican Committee’s chairman at the time—a then unseasoned politician named George Herbert Walker Bush. The elder Bush latched onto this “boy genius”, giving Rove something he badly wanted: contacts with the biggest political names in Texas. After these introductions, Rove was off and running, opening a political consulting firm in Austin and quickly attracting the state’s most prominent Republicans as clients.

 

In those days, Texas was a Democratic stronghold. It had been over a century since a Republican sat in the governor’s seat. Rove immediately set about changing things, helping GOP candidates systematically take nearly all of the state’s political posts.

 

A pivotal moment in this makeover came during the 1986 race for the governorship, a contest between Rove’s client Bill Clements and Democratic incumbent Mark White. When polls showed the contest was too close to call, Rove reportedly dipped into his bag of tricks, publicly announcing that he had found an electronic listening device in his office. Which cast suspicion on the Democrats and tipped the election in Clements’ favor. No evidence corroborating Rove’s allegation ever surfaced.

 

Eight years later, Rove’s scheming would benefit another gubernatorial candidate: George W. Bush. According to the Guardian, in the final days of Bush’s race against Democrat Anne Richards, Texas voters began receiving “polling” calls, inquiring, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if you knew her staff is dominated by lesbians?” Once again, insinuation won the day, and Bush was elected governor. Afterwards, Richards’ campaign advisor George Shipley observed, “Rove has used this kind of dirty tricks in every campaign he’s ever run.”

 

During his time in Texas, Rove had developed a reputation for breaking friendships as quickly as he formed them. Not so with George W. Bush, with whom Rove was smitten the day they met. Describing his first impressions of Bush in a New Yorker interview, Rove said, “He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have.”

 

This attention from Rove turned out to be all Bush would need to rise to America’s top office. In 2000, after becoming George Jr.’s presidential campaign advisor, Rove, according to the New Yorker, turned his vitriol on GOP leadership rival John McCain, spreading rumors that McCain had been a traitor during the Vietnam war, and had fathered a child out of wedlock by a prostitute. In no time, Bush was anointed the Republican presidential candidate.

 

During the 2000 election, more developments would surface bearing the so-called “Mark of Rove”. In a move echoing the 1986 office-bugging scandal, a news story was leaked about an advertising rep for the Bush campaign who had been arrested for sending to Gore headquarters a tape of Bush practicing for a debate. The tape did indeed show up at Gore’s office, and the Democrats had to fight bad publicity.

 

When Bush finally gained the Oval Office, Rove’s help was not forgotten. The nerdy, middle-class kid became chief strategist to the Republican government, wielding an influence that quickly became the stuff of legends and whispers. “Little happens on any issue without Karl’s OK,” wrote former presidential advisor John Dilulio in a 2001 e-mail to Esquire magazine. The New Yorker notes that the Democrats “use ‘Rove’ as shorthand for ‘the Bush Administration’ as in, ‘Is Rove going to invade Syria?’”

 

But Rove’s tendency to operate behind the scenes makes such speculation about his power just that—speculation. As Time.com put it, “Few people know exactly where or whether the perception of his clout diverges from reality.”

 

Of course, his propensity for smear campaigns isn’t the only thing keeping Rove ensconced in the White House; in a game as full-contact as politics, both parties have plenty of people to do the muckraking. Rather, Rove has distinguished himself as, in the words of Bush PR rep Mark McKinnon, the “Bobby Fischer of politics,” who, “sees about 20 moves ahead.” It was, according to Metro Beat, Rove who in the wake of 9/11, seized upon the political advantages his party could draw from terrorism, telling Bush, “We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of… protecting America.”

 

So now that Rove’s attained nearly ultimate political power, what’s next for the man known as “Bush’s brain”? Priority number one, obviously, is getting his boss re-elected in November… true to the principle “All’s fair in love and war”.

 

But Rove’s agenda may in fact be much larger. As a recent New Yorker profile put it, “The real prize is creating a Republican majority that would… last for a generation and… wind up profoundly changing the relationship between citizen and state.”

 

He may not be far from this lofty goal. The Guardian observes, “The Republicans now control the presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Rove’s task now is to… recast Washington’s third source of power, the supreme court, from its current cautious conservatism to a more red-blooded Republicanism.” According to the New Yorker, he is doing just that, with the Senate now confirming an average of six Bush-nominated (and reportedly Rove-selected) federal judges a month.

 

If this pattern continues, the America of Karl Rove may soon be at hand