Karl Rove Bids Emotional Farewell to White House, Bush

By Todd J. Gillman, The Dallas Morning News

Aug. 14–WASHINGTON — The president’s grim expression and glistening eyes said it all. Karl Rove’s resignation Monday will send him into his final battles without his most trusted strategist, the man who engineered his ascent to power.

“We’ve been friends for a long time and we’re still going to be friends,” Mr. Bush said. “I’ll be on the road behind you here in a bit.”

Mr. Rove, the top political mind in Texas when he began charting Mr. Bush’s course to the White House and the primary force behind two successful national campaigns, announced that he will resign Aug. 31. His voice, too, choked as he proclaimed his abiding loyalty to the president.

He said he would have liked to stay until the end of Mr. Bush’s term, but it was time to move on.

“Look, I’m a competitive guy,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday while en route to a final summer stint at Mr. Bush’s side in Crawford. “I’m tempted to stick around for the next fight. … [but] “I’ve got a family, and I’ve asked my family to go through a lot and to sacrifice a lot.”

Mr. Rove’s reputation as a brilliant strategist is sterling, though his results in packaging the president’s policies are mixed. The Bush visions for Social Security and immigration have fallen flat. The Iraq war has dragged on and pushed Mr. Bush’s popularity to record lows. Mr. Rove himself is even more unloved.

The last time Gallup surveyed Americans about him, in March, just one in five expressed a favorable opinion.

“For a while this will be a brand new world without Karl,” press secretary Tony Snow said.

He called it impressive that Mr. Rove lasted so long in such a high-octane job.

“It is difficult to imagine the White House without him,” said longtime Bush adviser Karen Hughes, who began working with Mr. Rove in Texas. She called him the “Energizer Bunny of the West Wing.”

Students of they way presidents organize their staffs say Mr. Rove can’t be replaced — not directly. The chief of staff — first Andy Card, now Josh Bolten — has had formal control of daily operations and decisions, but Mr. Rove stood apart in his ability to connect day-to-day scrapes with longer-term goals.

And while presidents always bring confidants to Washington, Mr. Rove had a rare combination of savvy and trust.

“It’s a tremendous loss for them,” said David Gergen, an adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton and now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Democrats have demonized Mr. Rove for years. They point to divisive electoral tactics and evidence that they say shows he had a hand in unmasking CIA operative Valerie Plame to get back at her husband, who questioned the administration’s claims about Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Rove testified five times before the grand jury investigating the Plame leak, but was never indicted. Critics also see his fingerprints on the firing of U.S. attorneys; Mr. Bush has ordered him to refuse testify before Congress about the firings, and the White House has claimed executive privilege, meaning he doesn’t have to.

Key lawmakers made clear that those inquiries will persist.

“I continue to ask what Mr. Rove and others at the White House are so desperate to hide,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Said Mr. Rove, “The subpoenas are going to keep flying my way. I’m Moby Dick, and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab.”

Friends had urged Mr. Rove to go out on top after the 2004 re-election. When Republicans lost control of Congress last November, a setback that cost Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld his job, Mr. Rove chose not to skulk off immediately in defeat.

George Washington University presidential scholar Steve Hess said Mr. Rove deserves admiration for Mr. Bush’s wins, but his domestic policy record is far weaker.

“It’s very hard to find successes in the things he was promoting,” Mr. Hess said, and “since the president will never run in another election, he certainly has no need of the successful Karl Rove.”

That makes the resignation somewhat unremarkable, he said.

“This is the sort of thing that tends to happen in the seventh year of all two-term administrations,” Mr. Hess said, adding that Mr. Rove can command huge sums as an author or lecturer. “You see people drawing up to $100,000 for speeches. He will make up, in a sense, for deferred income.”

Mr. Rove said he has ruled out working for any of the 2008 presidential candidates, having promised his wife he won’t take on another all-consuming assignment.

“I’ve got friends in all the campaigns. I do want to see this president succeeded by a Republican,” Mr. Rove said, adding that he’ll be happy to provide advice informally.

He’d like to teach. And he’ll pitch in with the Bush library in Dallas after moving back to the family home in Ingram, near San Antonio, where his son, Andrew, attends Trinity University.

“The president has encouraged me to write a book. I will do a book,” he said, though he was vague on what it would be about — a campaign primer, a tell-all about life in the White House, perhaps. “I’m a student of history, so I’d rather talk about the history of this president.”

He’ll also be available to bounce around ideas whenever Mr. Bush wants, Mr. Rove said: “He knows my phone number, and I know his.”

And, Mr. Gergen predicted, Mr. Rove will be back.

“He’s a little radioactive in politics right now, but Karl hasn’t vanished,” Mr. Gergen said. “He’ll remain a major voice…. He’ll be highly sought after on the lecture circuit. There are a number of universities that would love to have him come teach a course on realpolitik. Fox News will, I’m sure, create a Karl Rove chair.”

WHAT ROVE LEAVES BEHIND, WHAT’S AHEAD FOR HIM:

–The Architect: President Bush dubbed Karl Rove “The Architect,” a mastermind behind his political career. The two men met in 1973, later bonding in a string of victorious election days that came to a resounding end last November when voters gave Democrats control of Congress.

–Rove legacy: The Bush-Rove team was one of the most successful candidate-strategist teams in recent history. Mr. Rove helped oversee the two presidential wins and the 2002 midterms in which the GOP defied history by gaining in Congress. He was less successful in helping Mr. Bush govern, particularly in the second term amid congressional investigations, criticism from conservatives and weariness over the Iraq war. Mr. Rove’s goal of building a national Republican majority disintegrated with the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress. And many of the Republicans now running for president have sought to distance themselves from Mr. Bush, although in another sign of the Rove legacy, those campaign staffs are filled with people who have worked with him and imitated some of his tactics.

STORY BROKEN ON EDITORIAL PAGE: The Wall Street Journal told readers on the front page of its Monday editions to turn to the editorial pages for the “why” behind the Rove story. That’s because Mr. Rove chose to quietly make the announcement through an interview with longtime acquaintance Paul Gigot, the paper’s editorial page editor. “He’s the master of spin. He selected a friendly environment in which to make his announcement and in a sense control the message,” said Louis Ureneck, chairman of the journalism department at Boston University. “If he had told a reporter, he likely would have faced tougher questions.”

BIG LOSS White House officials acknowledged that his departure was a blow. Known as a ruthless political warrior, Mr. Rove, who did not graduate from college, possessed a love of history, an encyclopedic command of political minutiae and a wonkish love of policy. “Obviously those of us who are staying in place need to pick up our game,” said White House counselor Ed Gillespie.

LOOKING AHEAD: Mr. Rove said he has been talking to Mr. Bush about leaving for almost a year, realizing there always seems to be a better time to do it than the present. The timing was forced, Mr. Rove said, by the realization that anybody who did not plan to stay until the January 2009 end of the administration should leave before Labor Day to allow time for replacements and retooling. Mr. Rove said foes who claim “they forced me to leave reminds me of the old story about the rooster who thought by crowing loudly he made the sun come up.”

PARTISAN FIRE: Critics have assailed his hardball style that left a trail of political skullduggery. “Karl Rove was an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided, the special interests more powerful and the American people more shut out from their government than any time in memory,” said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate. John Edwards’ entire statement was: “Goodbye, good riddance.”

LEGAL FIGHTS: Mr. Rove remains a target of Democratic congressional leaders examining all the political machinations of an administration which has asserted sweeping presidential powers and privileges. Mr. Bush ordered Mr. Rove to not testify in an inquiry into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, and he earlier avoided indictment in the leak of the name of a covert CIA officer. But “I’m realistic,” he said Monday. “The subpoenas are going to keep flying my way” as Democrats seek the role of “Captain Ahab.”

From wire reports

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? President Bush took a host of Texans with him to Washington in 2001, and while some remain, they have switched jobs. A review of top Bush aides from Texas:

–Joe Allbaugh: He was chief of staff when Mr. Bush was governor, managed the 2000 presidential campaign and served as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2003, when he left to become a consultant.

–Dan Bartlett: Mr. Bush’s longest-serving aide, he resigned his post as counselor to the president last month. Until then, he had worked nearly his entire adult life for Mr. Bush.

–Donald Evans: A longtime Bush friend from Midland, he served as commerce secretary in the president’s first term and now oversees the committee searching for a site for Mr. Bush’s presidential library.

–Al Gonzales: Now attorney general, he went to Washington as White House counsel. Mr. Bush has been his patron throughout his career, making him counselor to the governor, Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas Supreme Court.

–Albert Hawkins: He was secretary of the Cabinet until he returned to Texas, where he oversees the state’s Health and Human Services Commission.

–Israel Hernandez: As Mr. Bush’s travel aide, he earned the nickname “Altoid Boy” for dispensing the breath mints to the candidate. He later served as deputy assistant to the president, and he’s now an assistant secretary of commerce.

–Karen Hughes: She sculpted Mr. Bush’s message from Austin to Washington, eventually serving as counselor to the president. Now, as an undersecretary of state, she is trying to improve the nation’s image in the Middle East.

–Clay Johnson: He served as White House personnel director and is now a top budget aide.

–Mark McClellan: He was a White House policy aide, then head of the Food and Drug Administration and the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. He resigned last year.

–Scott McClellan: Long a Bush spokesman, he rose to White House press secretary but resigned last year to return to Texas.

–Harriet Miers: The former Dallas City Council member was White House legal counsel and a Bush nominee to the Supreme Court — until an outcry from conservatives forced her to withdraw. She recently rejoined the law firm Locke Liddell & Sapp.

–Margaret Spellings: A policy adviser to Mr. Bush as governor and president, she is now the U.S. education secretary.

KARL ROVE’S LONG HISTORY WITH THE BUSH FAMILY:

–1973: Rove became chairman of the College Republicans. During his time in Washington, D.C., he became a special assistant to Republican National Committee Chairman George H.W. Bush and met George W. Bush.

–1977: Worked for a political action committee dedicated to making the elder Bush president in 1980.

–1978: Advised younger Bush during his unsuccessful Texas congressional campaign.

–1980: Assisted George H.W. Bush’s unsuccessful presidential campaign.

–1994: Adviser for George W. Bush’s successful Texas gubernatorial campaign.

–1998: Adviser for Gov. Bush’s successful re-election campaign.

–2000: Chief strategist for Bush’s presidential campaign.

–2004: Chief strategist for re-election campaign.

–2005: Currently assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to President George W. Bush.

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