I thought this was a fairly objective view of Rove.
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Bush allies, critics go all out in fight over Rove
Sunday, July 17, 2005 at 07:14 JST
WASHINGTON — The CIA leak probe that has entangled Karl Rove and all but gagged the White House has delighted Democrats who see the architect of U.S. President George W. Bush's triumphs as an irresistible target.
Rove, 54, has acquired a reputation for no-holds-barred tactics — critics call them dirty tricks — as he helped Bush win the Texas governorship, and from there carry the presidency in 2000 and 2004.
Along the way, he has picked up nicknames: A recent bestselling book called him "Bush's Brain," but Bush himself has dubbed him "Boy Genius" and even "Turd Blossom," though Rove says it's not as unflattering as it sounds.
"It's a Texas phrase. In the west Texas plains, wild flowers will spring up through nature's natural fertilizer, shall we say," Rove told ABC television in 2004.
It's unclear what sort of flowers may spring up out of the trouble the veteran stategist now finds himself in: Publicly linked to a leak that may have compromised a covert CIA agent, with Democrats calling for his head.
A federal prosecutor has been looking into whether a crime was committed, and by whom, when a conservative journalist revealed in a July 2003 column that the wife of a critic of the war in Iraq was a CIA operative, citing two senior Bush administration officials.
The critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, has accused Rove of "abuse of power" and said he ought to be "frog-marched" from the White House for his reported role in telling reporters that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA.
Wilson has said the leak was meant to punish him for saying, after a CIA fact-finding mission to Niger, that Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein sought raw materials for nuclear weapons in Africa was not accurate.
Nearly two years after the White House denied he was involved, and weeks after Rove's lawyer proclaimed his client's innocence, at least one reporter said in recently published emails that Rove told him Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.
The White House seemed shell-shocked by the reports, which left unclear whether Rove knew that Plame was undercover, a key issue under a US law that makes knowingly unmasking a covert CIA agent a crime.
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan, under a barrage of sometimes hostile questioning, refused to repeat White House pledges to fire any aide found responsible for leaking classified information.
"At some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete," said McClellan.
The president, who in October 2003 called the leak "a criminal action," shifted gears and insisted he would neither condemn nor support Rove until after the probe.
"This is a serious investigation. And it is very important for people not to prejudge the investigation based on media reports," the president said during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Rove, who sat quietly behind him, is regarded as brilliant but ruthless, a college drop-out who knew from the time he was a schoolboy he wanted to run a national political campaign.
The image has been played up in books such as "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W Bush Presidential" and "Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W Bush."
But most of all, Rove is the supreme political operator who makes it his job to know how every county in the United States will react to any White House decision.
From the 1980s, Rove prepared the younger Bush for the presidency and helped him to a surprise win of the governor's post in Texas in 1994.
James Moore and Wayne Slater, the authors of "Bush's Brain," say that Rove learned how to use rumors as a political weapon, while at the same time covering his tracks so they could never be traced to him.
The 1994 Texas election was marked by a rumour that Ann Richards, the Democratic incumbent, was a lesbian.
During the battle for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, rumours spread that Bush's main opponent, Senator John McCain, had fathered illegitimate children.
Rove's aggressive no-hold barred style was evident in Bush's bitterly fought election contest with John Kerry.
The Massachusetts senator struggled under labels affixed to him by the Bush campaign, which derided him as flip-flopper unfit to be commander in chief.
When critics saw his handiwork in the controversy over Kerry's Vietnam War record, triggered by attack ads launched by a group called the Swift Boat Veterans, Rove denied it. (Wire reports)
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