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Bush’s
Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential by James Moore and
Wayne Slater Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Relentless James Moore and Wayne Slater present interesting
vignettes in their new book, Bush’s
Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. The sum of those
vignettes produces insight. Every reader will come away with a clear
impression of Rove: he is relentless. I guess that based on the political
biases of readers, that quality will be seen as either a virtue or a vice.
Moore and Slater make it clear that think Rove has gone too far in how he’s
operated in the past. Today, they present him as co-President, a scary
thought. Here’s an excerpt (pp. 56-9): If Rove’s campaigns are characterized by anything,
it is his attention to detail and an exquisite sense of timing. There is an
exact moment to attack and a right time to talk issues. He lays out a
schedule and plotline with the same eye for detail as a movie producer. So
the release of the film Power with its pivotal scene about campaign
espionage just months before a similar episode played itself out for real in
Roves office—leveling the campaign of Democrat Mark White—had the look of
extraordinary coincidence, at the very least. A federal grand jury in Austin was presented all
available evidence in the real-life bugging involving Rove. Gary L Morphew
confirmed to a Dallas reporter that he received a "target letter,"
notifying him he was the object of an investigation. The goal was to resolve
the matter in October 1986, prior to the November 4 election, but the
deadline proved impossible to meet. With the election approaching, U.S.
attorney for the Western District of Texas, Helen Eversberg, issued a
statement exonerating both campaigns. "At this time, we have no reason to believe
that anyone on Governor White's or Governor Clements' staff was involved in
the bugging," she said. Three months later, at approximately the time
Rove's client, William P. Clements was being inaugurated; federal
investigators conceded they did not have enough material evidence to indict
anyone. An inter-office memo from the DPS in February 1987
noted that Morphew had refused to take a polygraph and that he "remains
the primary suspect." "At this writing," the memo added,
"all investigative leads have been exhausted and it appears that no
criminal charges are forthcoming. It is herewith recommended that the case
assignment be designated 'closed.'" Morphew should be no more of a suspect than Rove.
His life, though, has followed a markedly different trajectory. Knight
Diversified Services went out of business and Morphew leads a hardscrabble
existence as a rancher on a small piece of scrub and mesquite in the remote
reaches of Commanche County, Texas. During the presidential campaign, Morphew
was asked again about the bugging by reporter Pete Slover of the Dallas
Morning News and denied again he had any role in the incident. One summer night about a year after the bugging,
Rove may have offered a glimpse of the facts. Political consultant John
Weaver had invited Rove and his wife, Darby, to dinner. The Weavers had been
friends of the Rove's for a long time. Weaver had worked on Clements'
campaign, and now that Clements was governor, he and Rove had moved on to
other projects. Democrats and Republicans were working together to
bring the Superconducting Supercollider to Texas. The giant atom smasher was
the most important scientific project in the country and the campaign to
bring it to Texas transcended political party. Matt Lyon, the defeated governors speechwriter, and
his friend, Patricia Tierney Alofsin, were also invited to the small dinner
party. At one point in the evening, Tierney Alofsin recalled, the subject of
conversation turned to the bugging. "Of course, Rove knew Matt had worked with
Mark White. And there was some discussion about it. And Karl all but came out
and said, 1 did it.' He was proud of it. It was sort of like, 'We really
messed you over, didn't we?"' Tierney Alofsin thought how odd it was to be
sitting there so long after the fact, after all the fulsome denials and the
wreckage it had made of White's campaign—and now Rove, grinning and
ebullient, was acting as if he wanted to take credit for it. She considered
getting up and leaving, but did not. "I don't remember
the exact words,
but I remember
being shocked," she said. "It was like those cases where
people murder people, and then they leave clues because they do this fabulous
murder, and they want the police to know they did it. It was that sort of
thing. He was so proud of it. "What came across to me, whether it was that
he did it and wanted us to know he did it, or that it happened and he wanted
to take credit for it in some way, it came across the same: 'Wasn't I a
clever boy?' That's the way it came across. He left the impression, wasn't I
clever, and didn't it work, and let me rub your nose in it.' It was so
amazing I couldn't believe it." All successful people are susceptible to moments of
rambunctious ego. Political operatives are conflicted by the nature of their
profession. If their ideas and implementation work, they do not get to take
credit. The candidate wins. Not the consultant. Maybe Rove did not plant the
bug. But his own behavior, new information from investigators, unheard of
versions of the story offered by Rove, and simply the timing, makes it hard
to disconnect him from culpability in the incident. Whenever he deconstructs campaigns of his past,
Rove always talks about luck. He is consistently lucky. But how much luck can
a political operative have? His office ends up being bugged and it gets
discovered the day before the only debate of the campaign? Not even lucky
K.arl Rove is that lucky. And the bug is discovered in the same year
that a movie about a political bugging is released and Rove wants people to
believe that, too, is just coincidence. Lucky Karl. Whatever happened, it did not stick to him, even
though, over the years, fingers have slowly pointed back in his direction.
Rove has claimed that situations arise and he uses them to create better
campaigns. But there is greater plausibility that Rove is responsible for
generating the environments that provide advantage to his candidates. He
never got publicly accused in the bugging of his own office. But it's hard to
look elsewhere for the perpetrator, especially using Rove's own standard of,
"Who had the most to gain?" Karl Rove did. And Karl Rove remains a primary suspect, regardless
of his arguments to the contrary. Several other mysterious things happened around
Rove as he worked his way toward the White House. And some wrecked careers and changed Texas politics
forever. Political junkies of any stripe will find
something of interest in Bush’s
Brain. Moore and Slater raise questions that will leave readers thinking
about how much they know or don’t know about both Bush and his closest
counselor. Steve Hopkins, August 22, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the September
2003 issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Bush's
Brain.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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