Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Thursday morning I read this interesting dissection of what went wrong with Karl Rove’s “realignment”, and while most of it is more or less familiar to political junkies, there are some interesting insiderish nuggets. But the mistake the piece makes that is almost unforgivable is from it’s title on down: “The Rove Presidency”.
Ever since I’ve been following politics from the late ’80s on, the media and the public in general has elevated the political consultant to the position of God, none more so than Karl Rove. But look, nobody elected Karl Rove to the White House (well nobody elected Bush either, but you get my point). Karl Rove is just some guy until he attached himself to a talented politician like George W. Bush, and ditto for folks like Paul Begala and James Carville with their political pony, Bill Clinton. Yes, the likes of Rove and Carville clearly have political talent and skill more than the average person - but their success or failure is intrinsically tied to the politicians they latch on to. Especially once those pols are elected president, the buck stops in the Oval Office.
It wasn’t Karl Rove who dawdled before 9/11, ignored Katrina, lied us into Iraq, or anything else - it was George W. Bush. The presidency is failing because of the president. As he has said, he is “the decider”, Rove is the adviser. Karl Rove has zero constitutional power or responsibility, while the president has truckloads. Bill Clinton’s presidency excelled not because of folks like Begala, Carville, Dick Morris, etc. but because of Bill Clinton’s decisions - and similarly Bill Clinton’s catastrophic failings were not the doings of his advisers, but himself.
We need to quit elevating these guys to the level of Gods - and the mainstream media, especially people like The Politico’s John Harris - are the most guilty of this. Karl Rove is, historically, some freaking guy who worked in the White House. President Bush is the one who history should record as the ultimate “architect” of his own darn failure.
Plus, Karl Rove is not that smart.
Yeah. He only won two elections with a below average candidate.
Then he should be sitting in the big chair, Dugger.
O-dub has a point. Kudos.
Of course, Bush is a very good candidate. He’s just a shitty human being and an even worse President.
George Bush is not a below average candidate. He’s a horrible human being, but he’s a good politician. And even so, Rove’s strategy was only good enough to lose the popular vote the first time around, and squeak past John Kerry the second time, and it was Rove who bragged about “the math” for the 2006 election.
George Bush’s elections as president can be laid at the right wing ability to control press and message. Positive marketing his meager sellable attributes, downplaying his negatives and simultaneously smearing his opponents. Repeated endlessly throughout the press in soundbites and slogans.
Bush is a bad speaker, inarticulate, has no particular ideological bent within the Republican world (Frist, Brownback etc more conservative - Romney, Rudy more liberal); he was beaten in the popular vote first time and his daddy was defeated for re-election earlier. Yet Rove perserved and Bush won two presidencies. Of course, I will admit a lot of Rove’s credit goes to two guys named Gore and Kerry.
I agree that Bush was a decent candidate. He’s just terrible at governing. In 2000 he was charismatic and likeable governor of a major state, as well as a solid conservative who could soften the edges for the general public. I don’t understand where the “below-average” candidate comes from. Dole was a below-average candidate. Romney and Giuliani are below-average candidates.
Politics is Bush’s forte. Before he ever ran for governor, he was a GOP insider and one of his father’s political enforcers.
He has been disastrous as a President because of his inclination to see every decision in a political context and to seek payback against opponents.
Those are awesome tools for political operatives, but catastrophic flaws in governance.
Karl Rove’s legacy
So Karl Rove joins the long line of senior officials leaving the Bush administration. Judging Rove’s legacy is a bit different than other policy principals. With someone like a Colin Powell or a Donald Rumsfeld, the question is whether they…