Follow @ontheissuesorg

2016 Election:

Hillary's book

Trump's book

Bernie's book

Ted Cruz's book

|

2016 Senate   Debates

Courage and Consequence:
My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, by Karl Rove


(Click for Amazon book review)

OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW:

This book is an apologia for the Bush presidency, by the man who has been called "Bush's Brain." If you want a "tell-all" book about insider gossip, look elsewhere; Rove admits imperfections in the Bush presidency, but he is overwhelmingly positive about its policies, its morality, and its legacy.

Rove is unapologetic and positive about nearly everything in the Bush White House. And anything bad that happens, Rove blames on the Democrats, without any apology that perhaps some bipartisanship might have averted the negative outcome. For example, Hurricane Katrina is considered by history to comprise a series of Bush blunders, which continue to cause suffering to this day, and to which Rove dedicates an entire chapter. Rove considers the entire incident to be a bureaucratic snafu caused by Democratic elected officials who would not let the federal authorities in to do their job. Rove says the Democratic mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic governor of Louisiana were "overwhelmed and overmatched by events." (p. 446). Rove cites "posse comitatus," which requires state authorization for federal intervention, as the reason Bush could not act. But he also cites Gov. Blanco asking Bush to "send everything you've got", which sure sounds to me like state authorization. Rove says Bush delayed until Blanco could be more specific -- that delay caused thousands of deaths -- isn't that the essence of bad-natured bureaucracy? One wonders what would have happened if Blanco were Republican.

The underlying theme of this book is that Bush did everything right, including the Iraq War. Rove's unapologetic nature extends to that subject in great detail. Rove describes when reports came in that WMD did not exist in Iraq (p. 343), as was the pretext for going to war -- but he still claims they indeed had WMDs (page 339), or maybe they were dispersed (p. 339), or maybe sent to Syria, or something -- like Bush, he will not admit a mistake.

Rove is most defensive about "Plamegate", which is the core reason that pundits will want to read this book. "Plamegate" refers to Valerie Plame, a CIA operative who was identified publicly by Rove. Identifying a CIA operative publicly is treason, which is a crime identified in the Constitution, and hence one may consider it a more serious crime than murder. Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, was sent by Bush to Niger to investigate whether Saddam had purchased uranium. Wilson reported that Saddam had not; the report became public and was a major factor in disproving Saddam's WMDs. Some press reported that Rove outed Plame to get back at Wilson; a federal grand jury investigation followed for several years, ultimately clearing Rove but convicted Bush adviser Scooter Libby. Rove dedicates four chapters to this incident and its repercussions:

• 20. Joe Wilson's Attack
• 21. Bush Was Right On Iraq
• 22. The Special Prosecutor and Me
• 28. Anything For a Scalp

Overall, reading this book is de rigeur for the pundit set, and for anyone interested in talking about the Bush presidency, or about the current defense for the Iraq war or any other Bush-related issues. It's a long book and often tedious, but does not suffer from the usual problem of retrospective books, where the "play-by-play" is just way too detailed. Rove was involved with so much that he need not overplay one incident or another -- it's all here!

-- Jesse Gordon, OnTheIssues editor-in-chief, December 2010