Karl Rove Aims to Set Record Straight on Bush Years

• Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence; My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, New York: Threshold Editions, 2010, 596 pages, $30.00.

Karl Rove is “the Architect,” perhaps the most successful conservative political strategist of modern times. Courage and Consequence explains his philosophy, campaign strategies, and methods. From the presidency of the national College Republicans at age 22 through the George W. Bush campaigns for governor of Texas, two successful Bush presidential runs, and service as Bush White House Senior Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff Rove was, as the book title put it, “in the fight” and usually the winner. As a consequence he made enemies, though he had admirers among Democratic political pros, including Bill Clinton.

His College Republican work came to the attention of George H. W. Bush, chairman of the Republican National Committee, which began a long association with the Bush family. In his career he developed many of the techniques of direct mail advertising. He became an effective campaigner through intellect and experience.

Rove’s first management of an electoral victory was a stunner. Ann Richards was governor of Texas in the early ’90s and had an approval rating of 67 percent. She was charismatic and humorous, famous for saying that George H. W. was “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” George W. Bush ran against her and won. He was encouraged to get in the race and guided by Rove, on the issues of school funding in particular, along with welfare, juvenile justice, and legal reform. It is Rove’s belief that winning campaigns must be positive. Bush was the successful governor of a large state, won a second term and began to be mentioned for president. In the 2000 election against Al Gore, Bush won so narrowly that the validity of some ballots had to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

George W. Bush’s presidency began with “ambitious, transformative ideas about domestic policy,” says Rove. Bush had critics on the left, of course, but also on the right, who said that he did not control federal spending and that his education and prescription drug benefits expanded the federal government. He came into office in a recession (sound familiar?) and persuaded Congress to pass tax relief, but in a concession to Democrats the lower rates were set to expire at the end of 2010. Rove argues that the cuts were beneficial and that they initiated the longest period of economic growth since President Reagan.

Rove says that though Bush had the reputation of being hostile to the environment, that was a false accusation. Environmentalists bristled because he opposed the Kyoto international global-warming agreements, which would have stifled America’s economy and job creation while giving a free ride to the developing world. The Senate opposed to the treaty unanimously. Meantime, Bush committed $22 billion to climate change technology, research, and deployment — more than the rest of the world combined.

The president had intended to push “transformative ideas about domestic policy,” Rove says, including “faith-based” initiatives, but the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001, transformed his into a wartime presidency, waging a new kind of war. Bush decided to invade Iraq because he believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction: biological, chemical, and probably nuclear. Leading Democrats publicly had agreed that the dictator had them, but changed they positions in the election of 2004. That campaign featured the charge that the president had lied the nation into war, which Rove calls “the most serious allegation that can be leveled against at a president.” In the book, Rove says that his most serious mistake in the White House was not insisting that the charge be refuted. He repeated this mea culpa in a Wall Street Journal column published July 15 of this year.

The memoir’s dual themes are: correcting Rove’s own public record and justifying and enhancing President Bush’s. Rove explains his own politics and defends his tactics in campaigns and in the White House. The criticisms of those tactics hit home. Rove had not been in position to respond, so he was anxious to get into print. Like Henry Kissinger, he understands the advantage of being the first adviser of a departing president to publish an inside-the-White-House book.

Rove remains loyal to his president. In the last sentence of the book, he says that he is ”proud to have been part of the long journey of a man of courage and consequence who sought to provide conservative reform of great institutions in need of repair and kept America safe in its hour of peril.”