Karl Rove: A Case Study in Political Anarchy.

There’s an old saying in politics: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.” It means that in seeking office, candidates can paint pictures of their highest aspirations, whereas governing is an entirely different matter. For the political poet practitioners, “going negative” is the last option. The trouble is that so-called political advisers and spin doctors take over the strategy of campaigns and too often and too quickly persuade their candidates that negativity equates to success. Karl Rove is one of these people. For him, negativity is the default position.

On the surface, Rove appears to have an impressive track record. He has been a Republican Party political consultant and policy advisor. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation in August, 2007. He also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. Prior to his White House appointments, he was credited with the 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial victories of George W. Bush. Bush himself credits Rove for the 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns. In his 2004 victory speech, Bush referred to Rove as "the Architect".

I am not impressed by Rove’s record. Rove is a so-so political strategist but he is also a corrupt trickster and a venal and wholly unprincipled man who has no conception of democracy. He once orchestrated a whisper campaign that an Alabama judge who did admirable work with youngsters was a paedophile. His mentality is “win at all costs.”

Rove is no stranger to scandal, disguising the truth and outright lying to get a win. For example, in 2002 and 2003 Rove chaired meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), an internal White House working group charged with developing a strategy to publicize the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States. Rove was the brains of WHIG in educating the American public about the threat posed by Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. Rove's communications task force within WHIG wrote and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing Iraq's purported nuclear threat. Putting it bluntly, Rove and his colleagues told lies to convince the American voters to support the Iraq war. Shades of UK prime-minister Blair and his spin doctor in-chief, Alastair Campbell and “the Dodgy Dossier.”

In August, 2003, retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson claimed that Rove outed the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency employee, exposing Plame and other CIA operatives to great danger. The administration was retaliating against Wilson and his op-ed piece in The New York Times in which he criticized the Bush administration's citation of yellowcake, used to make enriched uranium for nuclear missiles, among the justifications for the War in Iraq. In Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, the President lied about Iraq’s holdings of yellowcake.

Three years later, Richard Armitage, the deputy Secretary of State, was found to have been responsible for the leak outing Plame. An investigation led to felony charges being filed against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice-President’s chief of staff, for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was found guilty by a jury, fined and imprisoned. Rove was exonerated.

However, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary during this period, claims in his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, that the statements he made in 2003 to the media about Rove's lack of involvement in the Valerie Plame affair were untrue, and that he had been encouraged to repeat such untruths. His book has been disputed by members of McClellan's staff.

In 2007, Rove was involved directly in yet another scandal, involving the dismissals of several United States Attorneys for political reasons. Investigations into White House staffers' e-mail communications discovered that Rove had exchanged e-mails using Republican National Committee e-mail servers and personal e-mail account. This was a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Soon after the discovery, Rove was forced to resign. He said, "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family". I would have preferred an admission from Rove that told the truth, i.e. that his fingers were caught in the cookie jar.

What has Karl Rove achieved politically? His election record is flawed. There’s a good case to argue that his candidate stole the presidency in 2000. Four years later, Bush was barely re-elected. For the record, only two incumbents going back to FDR lost their re-election bids, Jimmy Carter and daddy Bush.

Undoubtedly, Rove preferred to work behind the scenes to practice his black political arts. Occasionally he made himself available to the media. In October, 2006, two weeks before the Congressional mid-term elections, he got things badly wrong. In an interview with National Public Radio's Robert Siegel, Rove insisted that his insider polling data showed the Republicans would both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

In the election, the Democrats won both the Senate and the House. Rove hastily backtracked.  Ten out of twenty-eight House seats, he said, were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the Democrat threat. Ironically, Rove argued that, without corruption and complacency, the Democrats would have only gained a dozen seats and Republicans could have kept narrow control of the House.

Soon after the election, the White House Bulletin cited rumors of Rove's impending departure from the White House staff: "'Karl represents the old style and he's got to go if the Democrats are going to believe Bush's talk of getting along.”

Rove’s truly dark period, the one that should have destroyed his reputation for all time, was when he advised President George W. Bush to promote Social Security privatization. Thank heavens – and Congress - it did not happen. At that time, Rove spoke about a “permanent conservative majority” and “world-historic realignment,” even though all he and his president’s failures managed to do was turn the Senate and the House Democratic in 2006 and pave the way for the country’s rejection of John McCain as it embraced Barack Obama.

If there was any doubt about Rove’s disgraceful and unprincipled behaviour, just look at what he did last week. He alleged that Hillary Clinton spent thirty days in hospital after a fall and that “she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury.” Later, Rove speculated that “Clinton endured a serious health episode for which she is going to have to be forthcoming if she runs for president.”

The truth is that Mrs Clinton spent three days in hospital after a fall and there is no evidence whatsoever that she suffered brain damage or any other permanent damage. Age and health are legitimate topics in a run for the White House but not if they are couched as lies.

Political campaigns in America have been dirty and corrupt almost from day one. Just look at Adams v Jefferson in 1800. The slogan, “vote early and vote often” was the mantra in many a campaign over the years. Surely, America should be better and above all this now. People like Karl Rove should not be allowed to spread their poison for political gain. It adds nothing to the debate and makes the political process all the poorer. The trouble is that there are no laws to stop Rove and his ilk from practising their dark arts and neither political party seems neither strong enough nor willing to remove men like Rove from their midst.