August 28, 2005
SOME WHITE House sympathizers have attempted to portray Karl Rove's role in
the Valerie Plame scandal as that of a statesman, seeking to provide
President
Bush with the best information possible on Saddam Hussein's nuclear
ambitions so that Bush could set policy based on facts. This has been met
with deserved
skepticism. Rove's career, even before he became Bush's deputy chief of
staff, is rich with reasons to think his motives in helping to identify
Plame as
a CIA agent were far darker.
After all, Plame's identity was revealed in a Robert Novak column on July
14, 2003, just eight days after her husband, Joseph Wilson, had embarrassed
Bush
over his Iraq war rationale. And Rove had talked with Novak on July 9.
As John Roberts, the Supreme Court nominee and federal appeals court judge,
wrote last month in another context, the fact that ''sometimes dogs do eat
homework"
is no reason to ignore more-logical explanations.
Rove's record has been consistent. Over 35 years, he has been a master of
dirty tricks, divisiveness, innuendo, manipulation, character assassination,
and
roiling partisanship.
He started early. In 1970, when he was 19 and active as a college
Republican -- though he didn't graduate from college -- Rove pretended to
volunteer for
a Democratic candidate in Illinois, stole some campaign stationery, and used
it to disrupt a campaign event. Later, in Texas, he gave testimony in court
that was embarrassing to an opponent of one of Rove's clients, even though
it was not true, according to the book ''Bush's Brain," by two veteran Texas
newsmen, James Moore and Wayne Slater.
Negative attacks have often been the center of Rove's strategies. In a race
between Texas Governor Mark White and his Republican opponent, Bill
Clements,
Rove wrote in a memo: ''Anti-White messages are more important than positive
Clements messages."
Often Rove has skated on the edge of being identified with certainty as the
author of dirty tricks. In 1986, the discovery of a planted listening device
in Rove's own office was widely publicized, damaging the Democrats. Many
suspect that the source was Rove himself. This was never proven, but Moore
and
Slater say, ''Karl Rove remains a prime suspect." In 1989, Texas populist
Jim Hightower was damaged by grand jury leaks for which, Moore and Slater
say,
''Rove remains the most likely source."
Again, most of the personal slurs against candidates who had the temerity to
run against Rove's clients have not been pinned on Rove personally, but they
follow a pattern. George W. Bush ousted Ann Richards from the Texas
governor's office in 1994 after a whisper campaign focused on a small number
of Richards
appointees who were lesbians and even suggested that Richards was gay. Bush
himself stoked the fire, saying some Richards appointees ''had agendas that
may have been personal in nature."
In 1990, Hightower's integrity was smeared. A federal investigation of his
expenses produced news stories, but no charge, despite Rove's telling
Washington
reporters that Hightower and several aides ''face the possibility of
indictment."
In South Carolina in 2000, rumors circulated that John McCain was gay, had a
black child, had a Vietnamese child, and got special treatment while a POW
in Vietnam. In 2004, a direct link was established between the Bush
campaign -- of which Rove was ''the architect," in Bush's words -- and the
libels against
John Kerry from the swift boat veterans. With such a history, is it possible
that Rove encouraged the Catholic bishops who questioned Kerry's fitness to
take Communion?
Earlier this year, he none-too-subtly bestrode the church-state amalgam that
helped elect Bush, telling a sympathetic and enthusiastic audience in
Washington
that conservatism is ''the dominant political creed in America." Always on
the attack, Rove said just this June that liberals want to ''prepare
indictments
and offer therapy" to terrorists.
According to Moore and Slater, the strategy of attack has been constant
throughout his career. ''Rove didn't just want to win; he wanted the
opponents destroyed."
Rove's connection to the Valerie Plame story was the center of attention in
mid-July but cooled fast after Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court
on
July 19. A LexisNexis search reveals 1,944 stories mentioning Rove in the
week prior to the nomination, dropping to 1,111 during the week after. Now,
with
Bush in Crawford for a prolonged vacation, the story has nearly
disappeared -- only 169 references in a late-August week.
Still, more is likely to come out after Labor Day. A special prosecutor,
Patrick Fitzgerald, is expected to finish his two-year investigation this
fall.
His goal was to find the person who leaked Plame's identity as an undercover
CIA agent -- a serious offense in the view of Bush's father. He and many
other
commentators have deplored the idea that the leaker may have been seeking
political retribution at the expense of national security.
So attention will inevitably turn back again to Karl Rove, who did talk with
Novak and other reporters who wrote the story but who is now being portrayed
by some as a neutral researcher in the Valerie Plame case. Yes, and
sometimes dogs do eat homework.
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Copyright
2005 The New York Times Company
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