Karl Rove gives campaign advice... to Barack Obama

The former Bush White House strategy guru gives guidance to none other than Democrat Barack Obama. Subject: How to beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race.

Not that you have asked for advice, but here it is anyway: Iowa is your chance to best her. If you do not do it there, odds are you never will anywhere. You are way behind her in most national polls. The only way to change that is to beat her in Iowa so people around America take another look at you. You did a smart thing organising effectively in the early primary states. But you can take advantage of that only if you win Iowa and keep her from building an overwhelming sense of invincibility and inevitability.

I do not like Karl Rove, but his political views from a strategic standpoint are interesting. Rove's directions to Obama are to-the-point, making the article actually a good read. (I hope the Obama campaign reads this.)

Meanwhile, Clinton slams Obama in Iowa; Obama starts a website to log attacks by Clinton; and everyone — including the media — continues to miss the point when skirmishing over healthcare.

Bush's 'brain' has left the house

...or at least he will by the end of August
This morning we learned of yet another devastating blow to the Bush administration. No, it had nothing to do with Iraq or Bush's fishing trip with Sarkozy — it's bigger than that.

'The decider' looks to have lost his decider: Mr. Karl Rove, king of Bush advisers and duke of GOP strategy.

A few hours ago, Rupert Murdoch's new conservative crown jewel, the Wall Street Journal, broke what will probably be the biggest American political story of the week: Karl Rove's resignation.

"He will move back up in the polls," says Mr. Rove, who interrupts my reference to Mr. Bush's 30% approval rating by saying it's heading close to "40%," and "higher than Congress."

Looking ahead, he adds, "Iraq will be in a better place" as the surge continues. Come the autumn, too, "we'll see in the battle over FISA" -- the wiretapping of foreign terrorists -- "a fissure in the Democratic Party." Also in the fall, "the budget fight will have been fought to our advantage," helping the GOP restore, through a series of presidential vetoes, its brand name on spending restraint and taxes.

As for the Democrats, "They are likely to nominate a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate" by the name of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Holding the White House for a third term is always difficult given the pent-up desire for change, he says, but "I think we've got a very good chance to do so."

If that quinella pays off, however, Mr. Rove will have to savor it from somewhere other than his West Wing office. He's resigning effective Aug. 31 -- 14 years after he began working with Mr. Bush on his campaign for Texas governor, 10 years after they began planning a White House run, and after 79 months in the political cockpit of a tumultuous presidency.

"I just think it's time," he says, adding that he first floated the idea of leaving to Mr. Bush a year ago. His friends confirm he had been talking about it with others even earlier. But Democrats took Congress, and he didn't want to depart on that sour note. He then thought he'd leave after the State of the Union, but the Iraq and immigration fights beckoned. Finally, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten told senior White House aides that if they stayed past a certain point, they were obliged to remain to Jan. 20, 2009.

"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," Mr. Rove says.

Splitting the party poles
Rove is the master of polarizing America and making the political discourse all the more irrational. He led the effort of painting the Democrats as weak on national security, an allegation they still even cave into Bush and break the Constitution to fend off. He learned how to push the right partisan buttons in his years in the White House; he pushed those buttons quite well. Besides getting caught up in the Plame investigation and a silly dance (MC Rove!) on YouTube (and a series of congressional probes), Rove pretty much got away with all the trash he inserted into the beltway.

As the debate gets going, Mr Bush and the Republicans will surely miss Mr Rove, who was quick to seek partisan advantage by tarnishing Democrats’ reputation on security. This injected added acrimony into American politics, such as when in June 2005 Mr Rove accused the Democrats of being fainthearted in their response to terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001.

Questions to consider on the implications of this latest development in the George W. Bush presidential saga:

What will the departure of key political guru Karl Rove mean for the Bush administration?

What are the reasons behind his resignation?

Will this throw the embattled President Bush into more political chaos?

Will the departure of the 'architect' cause the West Wing to cave in?

The Guardian Newsblog has a nice roundup of who's saying what about the resignation of Rove.

And who says everything bad happens in August? Take that David Plotz of Slate! Karl Rove leaving is most certainly a good thing for America. Of course he will probably enter the private sector and further muck up the nation's political lobby...

karl rove

Executive versus legislature

A subcommittee on judicial affairs in the US House of Representatives authorized subpoenas for a myriad of senior Bush aides yesterday, including Karl 'The Architect' Rove and Harriet ('Nominated for Supreme Court but failed to even get a hearing because she is basically Bush's personal lawyer') Myers, regarding the Congressional probe into the politically-motivated firings of several US Attorneys at the Justice Department.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been connected to this brewing scandal and one of far more serious — yet less covered — extent involving the FBI breaking the law (specifically provisions in the Patriot Act, as if that didn't give them enough power).

Congress finally began flexing its muscle by issuing subpoenas for documents earlier this month. The evidence from the documents directly contradicted statements made by Gonzales and the White House, and linked Gonzales, Rove, and the attorney firings from a number of emails between Rove and Golzales.

Politicians from both sides of the aisle have called for the attorney general's resignation. However, President George W. Bush has given Gonzales his steadfast support.

This is a White House known for its secrets and opposition into investigation. It has stonewalled any questioning — by the press or Congress — on plenty of major issues, not least Iraq and the 'war on terror', and is continuing to do so with these latest events involving the Justice Department.

Congress, with its yet-to-dazzle Democratic majority, has, however, been sticking it to the man lately. The man being the Bush administration and sticking it meaning politically threatening but still not exercising full oversight powers. Progress is being made, albeit sluggishly, on the evening of powers over Iraq policies between the White House and Congress. There are also signs of actual debate (gasp) of American policy in Iraq.

What makes the attorney firings odd is that at least one was fired not because of his political views, but because of his failure to politicize his legal work, something lawyers are usually taught against.

One must wonder: if Libby was the supposed fall-guy for Plamegate and FBI Director Mueller was for the FBI law-breaking, who will fall in the US Attorney scandal? Will it be Gonzales for political reasons, much like Rumsfeld left after the election? Or will it be a lower-level crony who will lose their job to gain props from the Bush administration?

technorati tags: gonzales, alberto+gonzales, bush, karl+rove, white+house, congress, democrats, subpoena, fbi, attorney

Some news in brief...

Maybe I'll post more later.

Something I have been waiting for — it was swept under the carpet until after US midterm elections — is the James A. Baker III-led nonpartisan Iraq Study Group. They will probably offer, like the 9/11 Commission, some good advice only to be ignored by the president and unknown by the public (not that they can't read it, multiple factors, societal and political, surround the public ignorance on such matters). Bush meets members of Iraq Study Group:

President George W. Bush cautioned Democrats wanting to reduce the U.S. troop presence in Iraq to consider conditions on the ground as he met on Monday with a bipartisan group expected to offer a plan for changing course in Iraq.

The group's work has attracted great interest from both parties after the opposition Democrats' sweeping victory last week that gave them control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Injecting a note of caution into the possibility of a major shift in strategy, Bush said: "I believe that it's important for us to succeed in Iraq, not only for our security but for the security of the Middle East, and that I'm looking forward to interesting ideas."

On the same topic (news from yesterday but all the more relevant today), the Iraq Study Group may have some good options to offer:

After meeting with President Bush tomorrow, a panel of prestigious Americans will begin deliberations to chart a new course on Iraq, with the goal of stabilizing the country with a different U.S. strategy and possibly the withdrawal of troops.

More politics. Man, Rove has a lot of nerve! (This article has a lot of great metaphors, by the way.) "Rove remains steadfast in the face of criticism":

For a man still climbing out of the rubble, Karl Rove seemed in his usual unflappable mood.

The Architect, as President Bush once called him, has a theory for why the building fell down.

[Rove retrieved] a single sheet of paper that had been updated almost hourly since the midterm elections with a series of statistics explaining that the "thumping" Bush took was not such a thumping after all.

The theory is this: The building's infrastructure was actually quite sound. It was bad luck and seasonal shifts in the winds that blew out the walls -- complacent candidates, an ill-timed Mark Foley page scandal and the predictable cycles of history. But the foundation is fine: "The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008."

Rove encouraged [(challengers to his political forecasting formula)] with supreme confidence. "You are entitled to your math, and I'm entitled to the math," he told a National Public Radio interviewer who suggested Democrats might win.

The question is, did Rove really believe the sunny optimism he resonated leading up to the elections, or did he know all along that this past midterm would not result in the GOP getting a grade A?

UPDATE: I can picture the partly laid-off Dateline NBC staff, doing a show called "Inside the mind of Karl Rove: the architect, the sorceror" or "To catch Bush's brain, the Karl Rove story", trying to probe the mystery that is the somewhat-placid and underpaid presidential adviser. Rove is slightly under-credited too; he is probably just one of the politicians doing it for power and glory... what happened to those guys? K-street, that's what happened — immense lobbying and special interest groups.

technorati tags: quotes, news, politics, foreign+policy, current+affairs, iraq, middle+east, iraq+study+group, rove, Bush, White+House, United+States, Republicans, Democrats, clearthought, us+elections, elections, midterm+elections, dateline, nbc, in+perspective, karl+rove