Bush loses his brain

By Weekly Archive On Aug 21, 2007

Some
people walk through Washington and never leave a footprint. Karl Rove
walked though Washington and left his jackboot prints everywhere.

He
is at once the most brilliant, the most powerful, and the most
diabolical political figure of our time. Not even Haldeman and
Ehrlichman held over Richard Nixon the spell that Rove holds over
George W. Bush.

Given
his influence over the president, Karl Rove more than earned the
public nickname "Bush’s Brain." Given his disastrous impact
on administration policy, he also more than deserves Bush’s private
nickname "Turd Blossom." In Texas, a turd blossom is a
flower that grows out of the middle of a cow flop. Think about it.
That tells you all you need to know about Karl Rove.

Rove,
indeed, did a great job for Bush: getting him elected governor of
Texas and president of the United States. After that, Rove should
have stayed in Texas — or at least stuck to politics. When he won
the White House in 1992, Bill Clinton didn’t put campaign manager
James Carville in charge of public policy. It was a big mistake for
George Bush to entrust Karl Rove with the job.

What’s
the legacy of Karl Rove? Think, first, of all the policy disasters of
the Bush administration, including: the stubborn pursuit of a failed
policy in Iraq; Harriet Miers’ appointment to the Supreme Court;
privatization of Social Security; the firing of eight U.S. attorneys;
warrantless NSA wiretaps; White House wheeling and dealing with
crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff; and amnesty for 12 million illegal
immigrants. They all bear the fingerprints of Karl Rove.

And
then think of all the people he trashed in the process: Ann Richards,
accused of being a lesbian; John McCain, accused of having a black
love child; John Kerry, accused of being a coward under fire; and
Valerie Plame, outed as an undercover CIA agent. For Karl Rove, in
the spirit of his political mentor Lee Atwater, it wasn’t enough
merely to defeat his political opponents; he had to destroy them
personally. Rove was a political assassin. His brand of politics, in
fact, is known as "the politics of personal destruction."

Rove’s
most lasting and most destructive impact was in the so-called war on
terror and the war in Iraq. In the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
most Americans saw the need to pull together as a nation: to heal, to
retaliate, and to prevent any similar attacks in the future. Karl
Rove saw in Sept. 11 the opportunity to make George W. Bush a
permanent war president and portray his critics as unpatriotic. For
the last six years, he has relentlessly exploited 9/11, turning a
national tragedy into a political club with which to beat his
opponents over the head.

Similarly,
after Afghanistan, Rove seized on the war in Iraq as Bush’s next
political campaign. It was Rove’s plan, quickly adopted by Bush, to
demand a congressional vote in October 2002 authorizing military
force: not because an invasion of Iraq was imminent, but because
midterm elections were imminent — and Rove knew Democrats would not
dare vote against the use of force, for fear of being branded soft on
terror. That vote had nothing to do with protecting the country. It
was all about electing Republicans.

From
the very beginning, Rove crafted the war in Iraq as a political
message: You either stood with George W. Bush or you stood with Osama
bin Laden. That strategy worked to win the midterm elections for
Republicans in 2002 and to re-elect Bush in 2004. But by 2006 it had
begun to backfire. Wanting a change of direction in Iraq, Americans
rejected Rove’s politics of fear and put Democrats back in charge of
Congress.

So,
what’s the legacy of Karl Rove? Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan
put it best: "He took a chance to realign the country and to
unite it in a war — and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled
niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. . . . It
will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has
injected, with the president’s approval, into the political culture."
And that’s a conservative speaking!

Sullivan
makes an important point: It’s impossible to separate Rove’s legacy
from Bush’s legacy. Yes, Karl Rove is a political and policy
disaster. But so is the president he created and worked for.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "How
the Republicans Stole Religion."
His email address is: bill@billpress.com. His Web site is:
www.billpress.com.