The Rove Years

Karl Rove was never quite as influential as his mythology. He wasn't president. He can't be blamed for everything that's gone wrong with Bush and he can't be credited for the smaller number of things that have gone right. I confess I have an odd perspective on Rove. In 2003, I was a Time White House Correspondent and he told me that Amb. Joseph Wilson has a wife who worked at the CIA on WMD issues. That started my involvement in the CIA leak case and nearly led to his indictment by the Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. After I was subpoenaed about my conversation with Rove in September 2004 until July 2005, I wanted to go to Rove and ask his permission to testify about our conversation, one which Rove has asked be on "deep background" and I agreed. Had my TIME Inc. bosses permitted me to reach out to Rove (or had I defied them) my involvement in the case might have ended earlier. In any event, as I documented in Portfolio, my lawyer spoke with Rove's on the morning of July 6, 2005 and I was given permission to talk by Rove which spared me going to prison. Rove and I have not talked since.

The Rove I know, and I don't know him well at all, is funny and smart and interesting. He also took a brutal style of politics, perfected by the likes of Lee Atwater before his deathbed conversion, and made it more brutal. Josh Green has a piece on the Rove Presidency in the new issue of The Atlantic.. His piece on Rove's early years and its brutality is stunning.

For me, the arc of the Rove years was about a series of wrong decisions beginning in 2002. Bush's popularity declined from close to 90% following to September 11th to a narrow victory over John Kerry in 2004. It kept going lower, thanks to most famously the Iraq War and its management and the adminstration's stunningly poor response to Hurricane Katrina. Rove's counsel helped Bush's support weaken among even conservatives. The Medicare prescription drug plan was a huge boondoggle that violated conservaitve principles. Indeed, Roveism has always been about big spending from the Homeland Security department to expanding the Education Department. There is nothing Rove won't spend to get elected. The decision to make Social Security partial privatization and Immigration Reform the two big domestic policy initiatives of Bush's second term will always be remembered as stunning failures. Why the administration didn't choose tax reform, with its power to unite the Republicans and pull in Democrats, I'll never know. As for attacks on opponents, nothing was too scurrilous. John McCain trashed in South Carolina in 2000, John Kerry's war record impugned--none of it was too ugly for Rove.

Rove's future seems kind of obvious now. He'll make a lot of money. He'll write a memoir that will earn millions for its advance and will take its shots at me over the CIA leak case. He'll quietly consult other Republicans but no campaign want's to be seen as being under his spell. He could wind up with a column and he'll do some personal campaigning, like his visit to the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer and last. But his dream of Republican realignment, of an enduring George W. Bush legacy....well, that's gone.