The Guardian profile: Karl Rove
Julian Borger
Friday July 22, 2005
The Guardian
When Karl Rove is in trouble - and he has been in a lot of it lately - George Bush has a simple way of showing his support. When he walks across the lawn out of the White House he has Rove walk with him, so the next day's photographs will show that familiar pink, bespectacled face at the presidential shoulder.
This is the currency in which President Bush repays loyalty, and no one is as loyal as Karl Rove. Before they met, George junior was just a genial fellow from a famous family with very good connections. Rove, the hard-nosed political geek who can reel off 20-year-old election results from obscure congressional districts, turned the callow pretender into a candidate, then a governor, then a president.
At the same time, he brought the Republican party lasting dominance by bringing protestant evangelicals and hispanic Catholics under the amorphous banner of "moral values" and a shared antipathy to abortion.
Bush acknowledged his debt at the re-election celebrations in November. He introduced Rove to the crowd simply as "The Architect", and put him in charge of White House policy, finally demolishing the crumbling wall between administration policy and politics.
There has never been a partnership like it in US political history - so close and continuing so seamlessly from campaign trail to government. Never has a consultant, a hired mechanic in the political engineroom, risen so high.
The official title, deputy White House chief of staff, does not do him justice. At the age of 54 and without a college degree, Rove is the second or third most powerful man in the US (arguably therefore the world) depending on where you place Dick Cheney.
You need to go abroad and back in time to look for parallels. He is the White House's Richelieu - or, if you ask his enemies, its Rasputin.
Yet now, at the zenith of his career, Rove seems at his most vulnerable. A Washington scandal he tried to brush off two years ago has broken the surface again and threatens to pull him under.
As with many of the White House's current difficulties, this tale starts with the decision to go to war in Iraq. On July 6 2003, a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, had an article published in the New York Times that cast doubt on one of the justifications for the invasion. Contrary to the president's claims, Wilson wrote, there was scant evidence that Saddam Hussein had been buying uranium in Africa. He knew because he had gone on a fact-finding trip to Niger the previous year and found the claims hollow. In all the controversy over pre-war intelligence, this seemed like a smoking gun. Eight days later, a veteran conservative columnist, Robert Novak, wrote a piece playing down the importance of the Niger trip, claiming Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction".
Ms Plame was indeed Wilson's wife, but she was also an undercover agent and the leak of her identity was a potential felony under the intelligence identities protection act, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The White House stonewalled, denying the involvement of senior people, specifically Rove.
For nearly two years, the investigation went nowhere, even after the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, threatened journalists with jail for failing to reveal sources on the story. Novak seems to have struck a deal. Judith Miller, of the New York Times, meanwhile, went to prison rather than talk.
It was Time magazine that cracked. Faced with heavy fines, it handed over the computer notes of its journalist, Matthew Cooper, against his wishes. With the cat out of the bag, Cooper announced his source had waived confidentiality. Cooper's evidence confirmed what many had suspected - that Rove was in the thick of it.
In a telephone conversation on July 11, Rove told Cooper that Wilson had been sent to Niger by his wife, who worked on WMD issues at "the agency". Cooper said: "This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife."
Despite this bombshell, Rove has yet to be "frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs", as Wilson once imagined. Intelligence identity law makes life hard for prosecutors, who have to prove the perpetrator knew the agent was undercover and leaked the identity "with intent to injure" the US.
But Fitzgerald is exploring other possible charges, including perjury and obstruction of justice. It is one of the iron laws of White House scandals that the cover-up is always worse than the crime, and this might be the case again. There are rumours of imminent indictments, but also of different targets: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to Cooper at the time.
Even if Rove escapes prosecution, the political damage is done. Several times in 2003 and 2004, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, denied Rove was "involved", calling such suggestions "ridiculous", and McClellan and the president pledged to sack anyone involved. The Cooper revelations forced Bush this week to re-phrase that vow, saying he would dismiss anyone who "committed a crime" - a penalty that most Americans would hope was standard White House policy, at least since Richard Nixon's days.
Bush's poll ratings for integrity have subsequently plummeted. Even Americans who hated him often noted that he was the plainspoken sort who said what he meant. Now even some who love him are wondering what to believe. The man who got Bush to the White House and won him four more years, is sullying the second term - the time when all presidents try to find a place in history but mostly spend fighting off scandals.
So far Bush has shown no sign of ditching his mentor. The president believes in loyalty, in receiving and giving it. He is also knows Rove has got them out of scrapes before. Bush's shrugging nonchalance - so attractive to voters - is only possible because Rove has determination and calculation enough for them both. Bush meandered into politics. Rove had much further to come but made a beeline.
According to a Rove biography, cheekily entitled Bush's Brain, Rove was once asked when he started thinking about presidential campaigns. He replied: "December 25 1950." That was the day of his birth, in Denver, Colorado.
There are no easy explanations for where Rove's political drive comes from. He was born into a modest, not very political or religious family. His father, a geologist, was away a lot and eventually left. Rove discovered, aged 20, that the man was not his biological father. A few years later his mother committed suicide.
Out of this turmoil came a determination breathtaking in its single-mindedness, and a bent for hero worship. At the age of nine Rove backed Nixon for the 1960 elections; and endured a beating by a little girl next door, a Kennedy fan. He was able to recall the incident, talking to journalists, four decades on.
Throughout the1960s, Rove was the perfect Republican, going to school each day in jacket, tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, carrying a briefcase. He later described himself as a "big nerd". But he was a nerd who got even.
Alongside his ambition and fixation on politics he appears to have believed that the end always justified the means. At school debates he had a mountain of reference cards. Every debater on the team brought a shoebox of cards, but he would bring up to 10 boxes and dump them down, intimidatingly. A team-mate said "there wasn't a thing on 99% of them". He seems to have been a natural at what he called "pranks". Working on one of his first proper campaigns, aged 19, in Illinois, he infiltrated the Democratic campaign and stole its headed notepaper, which he used on the streets to distribute invitations to their HQ promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing".
Three years later, he was caught on tape boasting about such exploits to student Republicans; the party chairman at the time, Bush's father (George HW Bush) was so impressed he hired him as an assistant.
One of his menial jobs was to hand over the Bush car keys whenever George junior went to Washington. Rove's description sounds like the start of a love affair. "I can literally remember what he was wearing," he said of an occasion in 1973, "an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have."
Since that day, nothing has stood in the way of their political marriage: Bush's opponents have been smeared as lesbians (Ann Richards, the ousted Texas governor), crazed veterans with illegitimate Asian children (Senator John McCain) and cowards falsifying their war records (Senator John Kerry).
The dirty tricks out of the bag, Rove has been close at hand but leaving no discernible fingerprints. Until this week. For the first time in 32 years, he has been caught, and his survival now depends on the gratitude of his partner and protege in the White House.
Life in short
Born December 25 1950 in Denver, Colorado. Discovered at age 19 that the man who raised him was not his father.
Family Married twice, with a son from second marriage.
Education University of Utah (left without graduating in 1971).
Career Volunteer on Republican campaign at high school; chair, then president, College Republicans, 1973; worked for former President Bush at Republican national committee, 1973; assisted former President Bush's 1980 presidential campaign; began consultancy in 1981; adviser to President Bush in campaigns for Texas governor (1994, 1998) and president (2000, 2004); senior adviser in current administration, and teaches at University of Texas
On Bush "... the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with."
Political consultant Mark McKinnon "The Bobby Fischer of politics. He not only sees the board, he sees about 20 moves ahead."
Friday July 22, 2005
The Guardian
When Karl Rove is in trouble - and he has been in a lot of it lately - George Bush has a simple way of showing his support. When he walks across the lawn out of the White House he has Rove walk with him, so the next day's photographs will show that familiar pink, bespectacled face at the presidential shoulder.
This is the currency in which President Bush repays loyalty, and no one is as loyal as Karl Rove. Before they met, George junior was just a genial fellow from a famous family with very good connections. Rove, the hard-nosed political geek who can reel off 20-year-old election results from obscure congressional districts, turned the callow pretender into a candidate, then a governor, then a president.
At the same time, he brought the Republican party lasting dominance by bringing protestant evangelicals and hispanic Catholics under the amorphous banner of "moral values" and a shared antipathy to abortion.
Bush acknowledged his debt at the re-election celebrations in November. He introduced Rove to the crowd simply as "The Architect", and put him in charge of White House policy, finally demolishing the crumbling wall between administration policy and politics.
There has never been a partnership like it in US political history - so close and continuing so seamlessly from campaign trail to government. Never has a consultant, a hired mechanic in the political engineroom, risen so high.
The official title, deputy White House chief of staff, does not do him justice. At the age of 54 and without a college degree, Rove is the second or third most powerful man in the US (arguably therefore the world) depending on where you place Dick Cheney.
You need to go abroad and back in time to look for parallels. He is the White House's Richelieu - or, if you ask his enemies, its Rasputin.
Yet now, at the zenith of his career, Rove seems at his most vulnerable. A Washington scandal he tried to brush off two years ago has broken the surface again and threatens to pull him under.
As with many of the White House's current difficulties, this tale starts with the decision to go to war in Iraq. On July 6 2003, a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, had an article published in the New York Times that cast doubt on one of the justifications for the invasion. Contrary to the president's claims, Wilson wrote, there was scant evidence that Saddam Hussein had been buying uranium in Africa. He knew because he had gone on a fact-finding trip to Niger the previous year and found the claims hollow. In all the controversy over pre-war intelligence, this seemed like a smoking gun. Eight days later, a veteran conservative columnist, Robert Novak, wrote a piece playing down the importance of the Niger trip, claiming Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction".
Ms Plame was indeed Wilson's wife, but she was also an undercover agent and the leak of her identity was a potential felony under the intelligence identities protection act, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The White House stonewalled, denying the involvement of senior people, specifically Rove.
For nearly two years, the investigation went nowhere, even after the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, threatened journalists with jail for failing to reveal sources on the story. Novak seems to have struck a deal. Judith Miller, of the New York Times, meanwhile, went to prison rather than talk.
It was Time magazine that cracked. Faced with heavy fines, it handed over the computer notes of its journalist, Matthew Cooper, against his wishes. With the cat out of the bag, Cooper announced his source had waived confidentiality. Cooper's evidence confirmed what many had suspected - that Rove was in the thick of it.
In a telephone conversation on July 11, Rove told Cooper that Wilson had been sent to Niger by his wife, who worked on WMD issues at "the agency". Cooper said: "This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife."
Despite this bombshell, Rove has yet to be "frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs", as Wilson once imagined. Intelligence identity law makes life hard for prosecutors, who have to prove the perpetrator knew the agent was undercover and leaked the identity "with intent to injure" the US.
But Fitzgerald is exploring other possible charges, including perjury and obstruction of justice. It is one of the iron laws of White House scandals that the cover-up is always worse than the crime, and this might be the case again. There are rumours of imminent indictments, but also of different targets: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to Cooper at the time.
Even if Rove escapes prosecution, the political damage is done. Several times in 2003 and 2004, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, denied Rove was "involved", calling such suggestions "ridiculous", and McClellan and the president pledged to sack anyone involved. The Cooper revelations forced Bush this week to re-phrase that vow, saying he would dismiss anyone who "committed a crime" - a penalty that most Americans would hope was standard White House policy, at least since Richard Nixon's days.
Bush's poll ratings for integrity have subsequently plummeted. Even Americans who hated him often noted that he was the plainspoken sort who said what he meant. Now even some who love him are wondering what to believe. The man who got Bush to the White House and won him four more years, is sullying the second term - the time when all presidents try to find a place in history but mostly spend fighting off scandals.
So far Bush has shown no sign of ditching his mentor. The president believes in loyalty, in receiving and giving it. He is also knows Rove has got them out of scrapes before. Bush's shrugging nonchalance - so attractive to voters - is only possible because Rove has determination and calculation enough for them both. Bush meandered into politics. Rove had much further to come but made a beeline.
According to a Rove biography, cheekily entitled Bush's Brain, Rove was once asked when he started thinking about presidential campaigns. He replied: "December 25 1950." That was the day of his birth, in Denver, Colorado.
There are no easy explanations for where Rove's political drive comes from. He was born into a modest, not very political or religious family. His father, a geologist, was away a lot and eventually left. Rove discovered, aged 20, that the man was not his biological father. A few years later his mother committed suicide.
Out of this turmoil came a determination breathtaking in its single-mindedness, and a bent for hero worship. At the age of nine Rove backed Nixon for the 1960 elections; and endured a beating by a little girl next door, a Kennedy fan. He was able to recall the incident, talking to journalists, four decades on.
Throughout the1960s, Rove was the perfect Republican, going to school each day in jacket, tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, carrying a briefcase. He later described himself as a "big nerd". But he was a nerd who got even.
Alongside his ambition and fixation on politics he appears to have believed that the end always justified the means. At school debates he had a mountain of reference cards. Every debater on the team brought a shoebox of cards, but he would bring up to 10 boxes and dump them down, intimidatingly. A team-mate said "there wasn't a thing on 99% of them". He seems to have been a natural at what he called "pranks". Working on one of his first proper campaigns, aged 19, in Illinois, he infiltrated the Democratic campaign and stole its headed notepaper, which he used on the streets to distribute invitations to their HQ promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing".
Three years later, he was caught on tape boasting about such exploits to student Republicans; the party chairman at the time, Bush's father (George HW Bush) was so impressed he hired him as an assistant.
One of his menial jobs was to hand over the Bush car keys whenever George junior went to Washington. Rove's description sounds like the start of a love affair. "I can literally remember what he was wearing," he said of an occasion in 1973, "an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have."
Since that day, nothing has stood in the way of their political marriage: Bush's opponents have been smeared as lesbians (Ann Richards, the ousted Texas governor), crazed veterans with illegitimate Asian children (Senator John McCain) and cowards falsifying their war records (Senator John Kerry).
The dirty tricks out of the bag, Rove has been close at hand but leaving no discernible fingerprints. Until this week. For the first time in 32 years, he has been caught, and his survival now depends on the gratitude of his partner and protege in the White House.
Life in short
Born December 25 1950 in Denver, Colorado. Discovered at age 19 that the man who raised him was not his father.
Family Married twice, with a son from second marriage.
Education University of Utah (left without graduating in 1971).
Career Volunteer on Republican campaign at high school; chair, then president, College Republicans, 1973; worked for former President Bush at Republican national committee, 1973; assisted former President Bush's 1980 presidential campaign; began consultancy in 1981; adviser to President Bush in campaigns for Texas governor (1994, 1998) and president (2000, 2004); senior adviser in current administration, and teaches at University of Texas
On Bush "... the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with."
Political consultant Mark McKinnon "The Bobby Fischer of politics. He not only sees the board, he sees about 20 moves ahead."
posted by Jamie @ 9:11 PM
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