By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-491117.mp3
Commentary: Karl Rove
Dallas, TX –
Karl Rove is back in the saddle. With Scooter Libby thrown overboard, Rove, apparently home free, now can go back to running the White House, and if he's not careful, running it right over the edge of a cliff.
For one thing, Rove is careless about what he says-not only, perhaps, to reporters, but in other settings as well. I heard him speak in Washington where, with no one asking him, he volunteered the following observations:
"The president is smart. He got through Yale. That takes something. He got through Harvard Business School. That takes something. He reads. I give him books to read."
It was patronizing and condescending beyond belief. You don't talk that way about the person for whom you work, especially if that person is president of the United States. What Rove really was saying is, Don't you worry. I'm in charge.
But that is the worry. As deputy chief of staff, Rove has assumed a policy role that is as alarming as it would be if James Carville suddenly had been put in a similar position under Bill Clinton. In fact Carville took no job in that administration but continued to act as a political advisor.
Actually Karl Rove has been no great help lately in politics. Wasn't it he who called James Dobson, evangelical head of Focus on the Family, after the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination, to assure him and others in the right wing that she was with them on all the critical religious issues? It was not many hours later that others in the White House were forced to say that religion had nothing to do with the appointment and should not be a part of the confirmation process. Moreover, one Republican observer has noted that Rove has allowed the president's support to dwindle to the right-wing base alone, with no effort to cultivate those in the middle.
Then there's the disturbing allegation made by Frank Rich of the New York Times that Karl Rove pressed for the war in Iraq because he believed it would be a great advantage for George W. Bush to run for reelection as a war president. Indeed, the operation in Iraq may well have provided the president's two percent margin of victory. But, if it is true, it can't be the only reason we went to war. No doubt Bush had other advice from other voices who were more responsible. The point is that Karl Rove had no appropriate role in those deliberations.
When Harry Truman decided to launch the Berlin airlift in 1948, not a single political operative was at that meeting. Nor did he ever use the Berlin crisis in his election campaign that fall. Bush needs to adopt the same approach.
Karl Rove and other purely political advisers should not be at the White House at all. They should be at the Republican National Committee, which is where Rove belongs now. The sooner the president understands the difference between politics and policy, the better off he will be.
Lee Cullum is a contributor to the Dallas Morning News and to KERA.
If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us.