Rove's Brain
Why the White House aide drives his opponents so crazy.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
One of our biggest arguments with Karl Rove was over the Bush Administration's first-term steel tariffs. We opposed them, and in one editorial calling for their repeal we scored "Secretary of State Rove" for letting politics trump U.S. interests. Mr. Rove never gave any quarter, and when trade promotion authority passed Congress in 2002 by 215-212, he tracked us down to read a list of Members who had voted aye: They all belonged to the Steel Caucus.
The episode captures the essential Rove--the political strategist whose larger purpose was always to advance President Bush's policy goals. In this case, he judged that Congress would never give Mr. Bush free-trade expansion power without evidence first of tough trade enforcement. We think Congress would have done so anyway, and that the steel tariffs and 2002 farm bill hurt America's trade leadership in the world. But right or wrong, Mr. Rove has always been as much policy wonk as political operative, and always loyal to the President's agenda.
This truth is hard for many partisans to accept on both the left and right, as yesterday's reaction to Mr. Rove's resignation announcement shows. Democrats either rejoiced that the evil "Bush's Brain" is gone, or blamed him as Barack Obama did as "an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided." The former is a way of diminishing Mr. Bush, while the latter is highly selective history.
Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign strategy was explicitly to be "a uniter, not a divider." The contested election outcome made the Bush Presidency polarizing from the start, however, and some Democrats have never considered him legitimate. The debate over Iraq and Mr. Bush's response to the war on terror has compounded the rancor. Mr. Rove is hardly any more "divisive" than any other political strategist; has everyone forgotten James Carville or Harold Ickes? The difference is that Mr. Rove's remarkable run of success--first in Texas, then nationwide from 2000-2004--has caused many on the political left to assume he must be cheating. Otherwise, how could anyone vote for these Texas yahoos?
The events of September 11 and Iraq have made this predominantly a war Presidency, and that fact has also colored Mr. Rove's record for better or worse. For the better, it provided the political capital to retake the Senate in 2002, pass the Bush tax cuts that spurred the economy, and frame the Bush Doctrine. Mr. Rove was especially vital to the first two. And as he argues, much of that policy toward terrorism is likely to be adopted by future Presidents of either party. With his recent "invade Pakistan" riff, Mr. Obama has himself signed on to the view that countries should not be allowed to harbor terrorists.
For the worse, the trouble in Iraq sapped Mr. Bush's public support early in his second term and diminished his ability to pass major domestic reform. Social Security was the most notable casualty, followed this year by the collapse of immigration reform. Republicans suffered major Congressional losses last year, though in this Messrs. Bush and Rove aren't much different than Eisenhower in 1958, LBJ in 1966, or Reagan in 1986. Our own sense is that the biggest GOP liability last year was corruption in Congress, not Iraq.
As on steel tariffs, we've had our differences with this White House's political-policy calculations. Especially in the first term, Mr. Bush refused to discipline Republican spending excesses and caved to GOP demands to water down Medicare reform. He also failed to protect the Constitutional right to free speech by signing campaign finance "reform." And he was too willing to toss school choice over the side while compromising on No Child Left Behind, among other things.
On the other hand, this Presidency has not squandered its mandate trying to play "mini-ball," as Mr. Rove puts it. Social Security and immigration reform are important for the country, and we'd argue as well for the political interests of the Republican Party. They were worth the effort. The same people complaining that Mr. Bush gave too little heed to public opinion spent the 1990s complaining that Bill Clinton did nothing without consulting a poll.
This is an especially controversial position to take now on immigration, and it's a notable irony that some of Mr. Rove's most vitriolic critics yesterday were on the restrictionist right. We know how he feels. Mr. Rove believes that a GOP that alienates Hispanic voters will soon be a minority party, and in this he is surely right. President Bush won 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and a decline to Bob Dole's percentage of below 30% in 1996 would make it hard for any Republican President candidate to win in New Mexico or Colorado, and perhaps even Arizona and Nevada. Until Tom Tancredo wins a statewide race, we'll assume Mr. Rove is a better judge of coalition building.
Mr. Rove is no Merlin or Rasputin, as much as liberals and some reporters want to believe it. He is above all a George Bush man. His rare mastery of history, demographics and policy made him a formidable political force, and we suspect it is his success far more than his methods that infuriates his critics.
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