Meet the new Karl Rove.
The man once revered and despised as “Bush’s Brain” has pulled off the strangest political feat of all: He has invented a post-Bush persona for himself - a mild-mannered TV personality described as “strikingly bland” and “a big vanilla wafer of a man” by the Washington Post. It began last fall with his debut as a columnist for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, continued with his signing a seven-figure contract with a Simon & Schuster imprint to write a tell-all memoir, and took off last month with his well-reviewed arrival as a political geek on Fox News.
If that weren’t enough, here he is in an interview this week with GQ, wrapped in his new, above-the-fray political persona talking about the joys of hunting, reading and traveling with his wife. But then, when questioned about the 2008 race, he lets fly the same old poison darts, disguised of course as analysis.
He opines that Barack Obama is “coolly detached and very arrogant,” Hillary Rodham Clinton “fatally flawed,” and Roger Clemens was telling the truth when he denied drug use to Congress.
Oh, and he takes stunningly little responsibility for the failed policies of George W. Bush or, for that matter, his abysmal approval ratings.
When you look back at your career, especially in the Bush administration, what’s the worst thing you did?
I’m not gonna be good at answering that.
But is there anything you feel guilty about? Or wish you did differently? [exasperated laugh] Off the record?
No! Don’t go off the record.
Off the record.
Okay, let’s look back, to the very beginning of the Karl Rove story, when you got handed the keys [from Bush the father, to deliver to Bush the son] until now. And you look at where the president’s approval ratings are today—
Yeah.
What did you do wrong?
Oh, look, I did a lot of things wrong. But the main thing is, we’re fighting an important but unpopular war.
You still think it was the right thing to do?
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, one of our biggest mistakes was, the first time Harry Reid got up and said, “You lied and you deliberately misled the country,” we should have gone back immediately and hit back hard, and we didn’t. We let that story line develop. In reality, you go back and look at what Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore—I’d be happy to supply you the quotes—what they said about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction.
If all that doesn’t call to mind the old operator, Rove goes on to slam the one-time Republican campaign worker who has accused him of fingering former Alabama governor Don Siegelman as a “complete lunatic,” and CBS as a “shoddy operation” for airing her allegations.
Now there’s the man we recognize. But with all that so-called candor, we’ll pass on the memoir, thanks.
Click here to hear James Moore, co-author of “Bush’s Brain,” discuss Rove’s legacy in an interview with MSNBC:
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