Posted on 04/05/2010 6:08:23 AM PDT by RobinMasters
When I served as a Senior Speechwriter in George W. Bush's White House, Karl Rove was the bane of my existence. The rule was that no speech could ever go to the President without its first being reviewed by Mr. Rove, and since Karl was an extremely busy man, he often didn't call in his comments to the Speechwriting Office till eight or nine in the evening. By the time these comments reached me, they often seemed hopelessly cryptic and unintelligible, yet somehow I had to figure out a way to work them into my draft without offending all the other big-shots whose comments I had previously incorporated…And all the while, of course, the President was waiting for his speech.
But despite the grief he caused me, I am one of Karl Rove's biggest fans. Karl is a truly nice man -- modest, personable, and extremely approachable -- yet you couldn't spend more than five minutes with him without recognizing that you were in the presence of a towering intellect. But having just read his memoir, Courage and Consequence, I am forced to conclude that Rove, perhaps more than anyone else, was responsible for the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
Let me recount a bit of personal history by way of background. About four years ago, around the time when Democrats were heatedly charging that Bush had "lied" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in order to build a case for war (after all, they argued, if the weapons had existed, why weren't we able to find them after liberating Iraq?), I was having lunch with Dr. Laurie Mylroie, one of America's leading students of terrorism in general, and Iraqi terrorism in particular. Laurie was beside herself with anger.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Ping
Karl Rove, “towering intellect” ??
No sale.
It would be a mistake to think that Rove made a ‘mistake’.
You get the leader ‘big money’ wants you to have.
Great read, thanks for posting it.
Rove is talented, but I think his mistake was more substantial than just not responding to Democrat charges. I think Karl is a “play as it lies” pol. He looks at the landscape and figures out how do I win given the current political climate. That’s why he favors going after the illegal vote and comes up with gimmicks like “compassionate conservative”. Reagan, on the other hand, sought to change the political climate by converting people to his point of view. Reagan was thinking ahead and placing his shots so that he didn’t have to contend with a bad lie.
I would say trhat the Bush administration’s failure to take on the MSM and their Democrat talking points on Iraq and the WMDs coupled with the failure of the Bush administration to adequately plan for a successor, along with the public perception to “make history” did the trick.
Cheney should have stepped down mid-way through the second term so that new face could have been selected and given a degree of experience to prepare for the 2008 election.
However, seeing how that administration functioned, they would probably have picked a compromise, RINO candidate to “appeal to everyone” and still have lost!
I would need to spend five minutes in his presence because it's just not that obvious from where I'm standing.
Wow...I did not realize exactly where the weapons had gone. Today the majority of all people believe that the intelligence was wrong.
Is this true:
“Why wasn’t the Bush administration citing Gen. James Clapper, the Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who said that satellite imagery proved conclusively that shortly before the war’s outbreak, Iraq had transferred its weapons of mass destruction to Syria? Why wasn’t it quoting Gen. Georges Sada, deputy chief of Saddam’s air force, or Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s chief-of-staff, both of whom also claimed that Saddam’s weapons had been transferred to Syria? “
Sigh. “Blame Bush/Rove” yet again. Try blaming the idiotic American electorate, who thinks they will get something for nothing; try blaming ACORN, who lie and steal; and above all, try blaming the boob McCain, who refused to run a race.
As I recall, the WMD were shipped to the “Beeka Valley” in Syria, and it was talked about all over the internet. Jet planes were uncovered from under the sand, and a huge find of yellow cake uranium was even found and shipped to Canada, according to a CNN Article. But, this was no worse than not showing the clips of bwarney, maxine waters, etc. etc. refusing to fix the bad loan practices fannie/freddie that were still over at youtube.com, the last time I looked. We could have stuck the banking collapse on the democrats like a tarbaby....WT*? Makes me think a higher, and common, force was pulling the strings
Essentially, you are saying that Rove is a tactician versus a strategist. There’s truth to that . . . .
Yes, President Bush and Karl Rove mishandled some aspects of the war PR campaign. Nevertheless, it’s a real stretch to blame Karl Rove for the election of Obama.
Ultimately, the blame lies with those millions who elected him without doing their homework. I’m not talking about the hard left who correctly expected him to govern as a socialist. I’m talking about those voters who foolishly fell for the hype and elected him expecting hope and change of a different sort.
The power to vote is a very valuable thing that should not be taken lightly. Most of the world doesn’t possess it. A billion Chinese, for example, would probably love to have what millions of Americans foolishly squandered in 2008.
Well, I once thought Carter was going to be a good president, too. We’re all entitled to make mistakes, and hopefully a lot of voters have now learned the hard way that votes do count.
Someone (maybe it was me, I don’t remember) posted a thread about Rove’s upcoming (at the time) book. I remember thinking to myself, this will be an interesting read. Meanwhile, on the thread, other FReepers were claiming, “I don’t need to read it.” Cracked me up.
The reason Obama is President? John McCain was the Bob Dole of the 21st Century.
I blame W.
Here’s just a few others that elected hussein obama:
George Soros - economic terrorist that should be sent to Malaysia for trial. We demand other nations send us terrorists against the USA but we harbor terrorists like Soros. I am sure that there are other nations that would want him on trial.
Soros acts like he gives a damn about the poor but yet he cause economic havoc against poor nations.
Soros also moved the HQ of his business to the Bahamas so that he wouldn’t have to pay USA taxes. The punk wants so much influence on this nation but doesn’t pay its taxes. Soros is a major advocate of decriminalization of drugs. The place where he has his business located is known for its drug money laundering.
Soros pulls the democrat parties wagon with organizations like moveon.org and several other extremist left groups.
David Geffen billionaire gay activist that played a major role in getting hussein obama elected.
David Axelrod did a replay of the same game that got Devel Patrick elected governor of Mass. — “Yes We Can,” “Just words,” etc.
Axelrod’s mother used to write for a communist newspaper so is there any doubts as to his agenda?
Of course you’ve got your ACORN and other leftist groups that contibuted to our current economic situation (forced sub-prime loans, etc.).
And we should never forget the effort that the MEDIA made to get hussein obama elected.
That’s just to name a few.
The man who was most responsible for the election of Barack Obama was George Bush, when he signed TARP.
From what little I have heard of Rove’s book, he makes the same point you do in your first comment. There seemed to be a level of frustration on the part of rove when they didn’t fight back...
- Allowing the Democrats and media to get away with saying that the tax cuts were for the rich only.
- Not placing the subprime loan scams on the Democrats and not saying that the Republicans attempted to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going back to 2003 but that legislation was killed by the Democrats in 2004, 2005, & 2006.
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