As US President George W. Bush’s election tactician, Karl Rove knew a lot about the importance of image. He certainly must have been aware, when announcing yesterday his departure from the White House, of the very pronounced and intractable image he has groomed for himself, deservedly or otherwise, in the American psyche. MediaScout can’t help but think back to a recent episode of the prime-time cartoon American Dad, in which a chill blows through the room before Karl Rove, dressed in a robe reminiscent of Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars, appears, wearing a gold medallion imprinted with an elephant. That image of Rove neatly parodied the growing perception that he was an almost superhuman mastermind of the political scene, a man whose machinations and manipulations spilled over from conventional political theory into the realm of conspiracy theory. But even in the irony-free Big Seven, a prince-of-darkness caricature of Karl Rove emerges: From the Globe to the Star to CTV News, one source after another uses the same epithets to describe Bush’s election strategist. He is referred to as “the architect” of Bush’s political career, the “boy genius,” or, more critically, as “Bush’s brain” by virtually every Big Seven source today.
As Rove leaves Washington, using the standard platitude given by departing Bush administration staffers that he wants to “spend more time with the family,” he is likely to be mulling over the yawning gap between the perception of Karl Rove and the reality. As John Ibbitson points out in the Globe today (subscription required), Rove “leaves having failed to persuade the uncommitted middle class to join the coalition he helped forge of economic and social conservatives in a stable, self-perpetuating majority.” As The National stressed last night, Rove lost much of his influence in the White House and in the Republican Party after the GOP’s “thumpin’” in the mid-term elections last fall. He stumbled into 2007 pursued by an aggressive Democrat-controlled Congress that hounded him over his roles in the Valerie Plame affair and in the firing of nine US attorneys for what appeared to be political reasons. Permanent Republican control of Washington—cited by news source after news source as Rove’s ultimate and undemocratic goal—seems anything but likely in today’s political climate. In the end, Rove proved to be a great (if amoral) campaigner, but a poor manager of America’s affairs. There are those who may hope against hope that the departure of the tactically-minded Rove may bring a new era and a new attitude to the Bush administration in its twilight days, but it is hard to see how anything will improve, politically or otherwise, now that Bush’s brain has left the building.
Maisonneuve MediaScout
August 14, 2007
