Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) was
Senior Advisor and
Deputy Chief of Staff to
former
President
George W. Bush until his resignation on August 31,
2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the
Office of Public Liaison, and the
White House
Office of Strategic Initiatives. Since leaving the
White House, Rove has worked
as a political analyst and contributor for
Fox
News,
Newsweek and
The Wall Street Journal.
For most of his career prior to his employment at the White House,
Rove was a
political consultant
almost exclusively for
Republican candidates.
Rove's
campaign clients have
included Bush (2000 and 2004 presidential elections, 1994 and 1998
Texas gubernatorial elections),
Senator John
Ashcroft (1994 U.S. Senate election),
Bill Clements (1986 Texas gubernatorial
election), Senator
John Cornyn (2002
U.S. Senate election),
Governor
Rick Perry (1990 Texas Agriculture
Commission election), and
Phil Gramm
(1982
U.S.
House and
1984 U.S. Senate elections).
Rove's name has come up in a number of political scandals,
including the
Valerie Plame affair, the
Bush White House
e-mail controversy and the related
dismissal of U.S.
attorneys controversy .
Personal life and early political experiences
Family, upbringing, and entry into politics
Rove was
born the second of five children in Denver, Colorado
, and later raised in Sparks, Nevada
. His stepfather was of
Norwegian ancestry. His biological father
left the family when Rove and his older brother were children. His
mother's second husband, Louis Claude Rove Jr. (1928–2004), whom
Rove knew as his father, was a
geologist,
and his mother, Reba Wood, was a gift shop manager. His older
brother is Eric P. Rove, and his younger sister is Reba A.
Rove-Hammond. He also has a brother Olaf, and a sister, Alma
Monroe.
His family
moved to Salt Lake
City
in 1965 when Rove was entering high school.
He became a skilled debator. Rove described his high school years
as
"I was the complete nerd. I had the briefcase.
I had the pocket
protector. I wore Hush
Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin,
scrawny little guy. I was definitely uncool." Put up
by a teacher to run for class senate, he beat his opponent by
riding in the back of a convertible sandwiched between two
attractive girls inside the school gymnasium, right before his
election speech.
While at Olympus High School
, he was elected student council president his
junior and senior years.
Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968. In a 2002
Deseret News interview, Rove
explained,
"I was the Olympus High chairman for (former
United States Senator)
Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he
was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science
professor at the University of Utah
, J.D. Williams." Bennett was
reelected to a third six-year term.
Through Rove's campaign involvement,
Bennett's son, Bob Bennett — a
future United States Senator from Utah
— would
become a friend. Williams would later become a mentor to
Rove.
In December 1969, the man Rove had known as his father left the
family, and
divorced Rove's mother soon
afterward; it later became known he was
homosexual. After his parents' divorce, Rove
learned from his aunt and uncle that the man who had raised him was
not his biological father; both he and his older brother Eric were
the children of another man. Rove has expressed great love and
admiration for his adoptive father and for "how selfless" his love
had been.
In 1981 Rove's mother committed suicide in Reno, Nevada
.
College and the Dixon campaign incident
In the
fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah
, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the
Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. As
with many others of his generation, enrollment in college protected
him from being
drafted to fight in the
Vietnam War. Through the University's
Hinckley Institute of
Politics, he got an
internship with the
Utah Republican Party.
That
position, and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped him
land a job in 1970 on Ralph Tyler
Smith's unsuccessful re-election campaign for Senate from Illinois
.
Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III won.
In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the
campaign office of Democrat
Alan J.
Dixon, who was running for
Treasurer of Illinois. He stole 1000
sheets of paper with campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign
rally fliers promising
"free beer, free food, girls and a good
time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and
homeless shelters, with the effect of
disrupting Dixon's rally. (Dixon eventually won the election).
Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973. Rove
told the
Dallas Morning News in 1999,
"It was a
youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it."
College Republicans, Watergate, and the Bushes
In June 1971, Rove
dropped out of
college to take a paid position as the Executive Director of the
College Republican National
Committee. Joe Abate, who was National Chairman of the College
Republicans at the time, became a mentor to Rove.
Rove traveled extensively, participating as an instructor at
weekend seminars for campus
conservatives across the country. He was an
active participant in
Richard Nixon's
1972 Presidential
campaign. As a protégé of
Donald
Segretti (later convicted as a
Watergate conspirator), Rove painted the
Nixon opponent
George McGovern as a
"
left-wing peacenik", in spite of
McGovern's
World War II stint piloting
a B-24.
Rove held the position of executive director of the College
Republicans until early 1973.
He left the job to spend five months, without
pay, campaigning full time for the position of national chairman of
the organization, for the 1973-1975 term in the same years he
attended George Mason
University
. Lee Atwater, the
group's Southern regional coordinator, who was two months younger
than Rove, managed Rove's campaign. The two spent the spring of
1973 crisscrossing the country in a
Ford
Pinto, lining up the support of Republican state chairs.
The
College Republicans summer 1973 convention at the Lake of the
Ozarks resort in Missouri
was quite contentious. Rove's opponent was
Robert Edgeworth of Michigan
(the other major candidate, Terry Dolan of California
, dropped out, supporting Edgeworth). A
number of states had sent two competing delegates, because Rove and
his supporters had made credentials challenges at state and
regional conventions.
For example, after the Midwest regional
convention, Rove forces had produced a version of the Midwestern
College Republicans constitution which differed significantly from
the constitution that the Edgeworth forces were using, in order to
justify the unseating of the Edgeworth delegates on procedural
grounds, including delegations, such as Ohio
and
Missouri, which had been certified earlier by Rove himself.
In the end, there were two votes, conducted by two convention
chairs, and two winners — Rove and Edgeworth, each of whom
delivered an acceptance speech. After the convention, both
Edgeworth and Rove appealed to
Republican National Committee
Chairman
George H. W. Bush,
each contending that he was the new College Republican
chairman.
While resolution was pending, Dolan went (anonymously) to the
Washington Post with
recordings of several training seminars for young Republicans where
Rove discussed campaign techniques that included rooting through
opponents' garbage cans. On August 10, 1973, in the midst of the
Watergate scandal, the
Post broke the story in article
titled "GOP Party Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks."
At
Nixon's request, a Federal Bureau of
Investigation
agent questioned Rove. As part of the
investigation, Atwater signed an
affidavit, dated August 13, 1973, stating that he
had heard a "20 minute anecdote similar to the one described in the
Washington Post" in July 1972, but that
"it was a
funny story during a coffee break". Former Nixon White House
Counsel
John Dean, who was implicated in
the Watergate break-in and became the star witness for the
prosecution, has been quoted as saying
"[B]ased on my review of
the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in
Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry
they did not aggressively investigate him."
On September 6, 1973, three weeks after announcing his intent to
investigate the allegations against Rove, Bush chose Rove to be
chairman of the College Republicans. Bush then wrote Edgeworth a
letter saying that he had concluded that Rove had fairly won the
vote at the convention. Edgeworth wrote back, asking about the
basis of that conclusion. Not long after that, Edgeworth stated
"Bush sent me back the angriest letter I have ever received in
my life. I had leaked to the Washington Post, and now I was out of the
Party forever."
As National Chairman, Rove introduced Bush to Atwater, who had
taken Rove's job as the College Republican's executive director,
and who would become Bush's main campaign strategist in future
years. Bush hired Rove as a special assistant in the Republican
National Committee, a job Rove left in 1974 to become executive
assistant to the co-chair of the RNC,
Richard D. Obenshain.
As special assistant, Rove also performed small personal tasks for
Bush. In November 1973, Bush asked Rove to take a set of car keys
to his son George W.
Bush, who was visiting home during a break
from Harvard
Business School
. It was the first time the two met.
"Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight
jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma - you know, wow", Rove
recalled years later.
Residences and voting registration
In 1976, Rove became the Finance Director for the
Republican Party of Virginia,
which did not have a single fundraising event on its schedule at
the time.
He moved to Richmond, Virginia
. Within a year, he had pulled in more than
$400,000 through direct mail fundraising.
Rove
married Houston
socialite Valerie Mather Wainwright, on 10 July
1976. He moved to Texas
in January
1977. His sister and father still remembered
"the
wedding [that] was so extravagant that [we] ... still recall it
with awe. But the marriage of the society daughter and the
hardworking political hack didn't last long." Wainwright
divorced Rove in early 1980; she was 26 and he 29.
He attended the
University
of Texas at Austin
in 1977; he still lacked a degree. In July
1999 he told the
Washington Post that he did not have a
degree because
"I lack at this point one math class, which I
can take by exam, and my foreign language requirement." In
January 1986, the now divorced Rove married Darby Tara Hickson. She
is a
breast cancer survivor, a
graphic designer, and former employee
of Karl Rove & Co. Their son, Andrew Madison Rove (b.
1989) is
an undergraduate at Trinity
University in San Antonio, Texas
. Karl Rove left Texas after Bush was elected
President in late 2000.
Now
owning a house in the District of Columbia
that is valued at $1.1 million, Rove sold his
longtime home in Austin
in
2003. The
Washington Post reported that Rove had
agreed to reimburse the District for an estimated $3,400 in back
taxes in September 2005. The taxes were owed because since 2002,
when the law changed, Rove was not entitled to a homestead
exemption for his DC house because he was voting elsewhere (in
Texas).
Rove was registered to vote in Kerr County,
Texas
, located about 80 miles west of Austin in the Texas
Hill Country, on 26 May, 2004. The residence that Rove
claims on Texas voter registration rolls consists of two small
rental cottages, the largest of which is 814 square feet.
The
cottages were part of the River Oaks Lodge that Rove and his wife, Darby,
once owned on the Guadalupe River near Ingram
. The
Roves sold the lodge in 2003, after renovating it, but kept the two
cottages, which the lodge rents to guests. (Darby T. Rove is listed
as a director of the new owner of the lodge, Estadio Partners,
LLC.) In early October 2005, a resident of Kerr County filed a
complaint with the District Attorney of the county to request an
investigation into whether Rove and his wife violated Texas state
law by illegally registering as voters in Kerr County, since
neither had ever lived there. Texas law defines a residence, for
voting purposes, as
"one's home and fixed place of habitation
to which one intends to return after any temporary absence".
On 3 November, 2005, Rex Emerson, the District Attorney, announced
that he had determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute
either Rove or his wife, and that his office would close the case
without further action.
In
addition to the $1.1 million home he owned in the District in 2005,
Rove and his wife built a home in Florida
worth more than $1 million, according to Rove's
2005 financial disclosure form.
The Texas years and notable political campaigns
1977–1991
Rove's initial job in Texas was as a legislative aide for Fred
Agnich, a Texas state representative, in Agnich's Dallas office.
Later in 1977, Rove got a job as executive director of the Fund for
Limited Government, a political action committee (PAC) in Houston
headed by
James A. Baker, a Houston lawyer (later President
George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State). The PAC eventually became
the genesis of the Bush-for-President campaign of 1979–1980.
His work for Bill Clements during the Texas
gubernatorial election of 1978 helped
Clements become the first Republican Governor of Texas in over 100
years. Clements was elected to a four-year term, succeeding
scandal-plagued Democrat
Dolph
Briscoe. Rove was deputy director of the Governor William P.
Clements Junior Committee in 1979 and 1980, and deputy executive
assistant to the governor of Texas (roughly, Deputy Chief of Staff)
in 1980 and 1981.
In 1981, Rove founded a
direct mail
consulting firm,
Karl Rove & Co., in Austin.
The firm's first clients included Texas Governor Bill Clements and
Democratic
congressman
Phil Gramm, who later became
a Republican congressman and
United
States Senator. Rove operated his consulting business until
1999, when he sold the firm to take a full-time position in George
W. Bush's presidential campaign.
Between 1981 and 1999, Rove worked on hundreds of races. Most were
in a supporting role, doing direct mail fundraising. A November
2004
Atlantic Monthly
article estimated that he was the primary strategist for 41
statewide, congressional, and national races, and Rove's candidates
won 34 races.
Rove also did work during those years for non-political clients.
From 1991 to 1996, Rove advised tobacco giant
Philip Morris, and ultimately earned $3,000 a
month via a consulting contract. In a
deposition, Rove testified that he severed
the tie in 1996 because he felt awkward
"about balancing that
responsibility with his role as Bush's top political advisor"
while Bush was governor of Texas and Texas was suing the
tobacco industry.
1978 George W. Bush congressional campaign
Rove advised the younger Bush during his unsuccessful Texas
congressional campaign in 1978.
1980 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign
In 1977, Rove was the first person hired by
George H. W. Bush
for his unsuccessful
1980 presidential campaign,
which ended with Bush as the vice-presidential nominee.
1982 William Clements, Jr. gubernatorial campaign
In 1982,
Bill Clements ran for
reelection, but was defeated by Democrat
Mark
White.
1982 Phil Gramm congressional campaign
In 1982,
Phil Gramm was elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives as a conservative Texas
Democrat.
1984 Phil Gramm senatorial campaign
In 1984, Rove helped Gramm, who had become a Republican in 1983,
defeat Republican
Ron Paul in the primary
and Democrat
Lloyd Doggett in the race
for U.S. Senate.
1984 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign
Rove handled direct-mail for the Reagan-Bush campaign.
1986 William Clements, Jr. gubernatorial campaign
In 1986, Rove helped Clements become governor a second time.
In a
strategy memo Rove wrote for his client prior to the race, now
among Clements's papers in the Texas A&M University
library, Rove quoted Napoleon: "The whole art of war consists in a
well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by
rapid and audacious attack."
In 1986, just before a crucial debate in campaign, Rove claimed
that his office had been bugged by Democrats. The police and FBI
investigated and discovered that the bug's battery was so small
that it needed to be changed every few hours, and the investigation
was dropped. Critics, including other Republican operatives,
suspected Rove had bugged his own office to garner sympathy votes
in the close governor's race.
1988 Texas Supreme Court races
In 1988, Rove helped
Thomas R.
Phillips become the first
Republican elected as Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
Phillips had been appointed to the position in November 1987 by
Clements. Phillips was re-elected in 1990, 1996 and 2002.
Phillips' election in 1988 was part of an aggressive grassroots
campaign called "Clean Slate '88", a conservative effort that was
successful in getting five of its six candidates elected.
(Ordinarily there were three justices on the ballot each year, on a
nine-justice court, but, because of resignations, there were six
races for the Supreme Court on the ballot in November 1988.) By
1998, Republicans held all nine seats on the Court.
1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign
In 1989, Rove encouraged George W. Bush to run for Texas governor,
brought in experts to tutor him on policy, and introduced him to
local reporters. Eventually, Bush decided not to run, and Rove
backed another Republican for governor who lost in the
primary.
Other 1990 Texas statewide races
In 1990, two other Rove candidates won:
Rick
Perry, the future governor of the state, became agricultural
commissioner, and
Kay Bailey
Hutchison became state treasurer.
The 1990 election was
notable because the Federal Bureau of
Investigation
(FBI), earlier that year, had investigated every
Democratic officeholder in the state.
1991 Richard L. Thornburgh senatorial campaign and lawsuit
In 1991,
United States Attorney
General Dick Thornburgh resigned
to run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania
, one made vacant by John
Heinz's untimely death in a helicopter crash. Rove's
company worked for the campaign, but it ended with an upset loss to
Democrat
Harris Wofford. Rove
subsequently sued Thornburgh alleging non-payment for services
rendered. The
Republican
National Committee, worried that the suit would make it hard to
recruit good candidates, urged Rove to back off. When Rove refused,
the RNC hired
Kenneth Starr to write
an
amicus brief on Thornburgh's behalf.
After a trial in Austin, Rove prevailed.
Karl Rove & Co.
v. Thornburgh was heard by U.S. Federal Judge
Sam Sparks (who had been appointed by
George H.W. Bush in 1991).
1992 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign
Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he
planted a negative story with columnist
Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with
campaign fundraising chief
Robert
Mosbacher Jr. (
Esquire
Magazine, January 2003). Novak provided some evidence of
motive in his column describing the firing of Mosbacher by former
Senator
Phil Gramm:
"Also attending
the session was political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved
aside by Mosbacher." Novak and Rove deny that Rove was the
leaker, but Mosbacher maintained that
"Rove is the only one
with a motive to leak this. We let him go. I
still believe he did it."During testimony before the
CIA leak grand jury, Rove
apparently confirmed his prior involvement with Novak in the 1992
campaign leak, according to
National Journal reporter
Murray Waas.
1993–2000
1993 Kay Bailey Hutchison senatorial campaignRove
helped Hutchison win a special Senate election in June 1993.
Hutchison defeated Democrat
Bob Krueger
to fill the last two years of
Lloyd
Bentsen's term. Bentsen resigned to become
Secretary of the
Treasury in the Clinton administration.
1994 Alabama Supreme Court racesIn 1994, a group
called the
Business Council of Alabama hired Rove
to help run a slate of Republican candidates for the state supreme
court. No Republican had been elected to that court in more than a
century. The campaign by the Republicans was unprecedented in the
state, which had previously only seen low-key contests. After the
election, a court battle over absentee and other ballots followed
that lasted more than 11 months. It ended when a federal appeals
court judge ruled that disputed absentee ballots could not be
counted, and ordered the
Alabama Secretary of State to
certify the Republican candidate for Chief Justice,
Perry Hooper, as the winner. An appeal to the
Supreme Court by the Democratic candidate was turned down within a
few days, making the ruling final. Hooper won by 262 votes.
Another candidate,
Harold See, ran
against
Mark Kennedy, an incumbent
Democratic justice and the son-in-law of
George Wallace. The race included charges
that Kennedy was mingling campaign funds with those of a
non-profit children's foundation he was involved
with. A former Rove staffer reported that some within the See camp
initiated a
whisper campaign that
Kennedy was a
pedophile. Kennedy won by
less than one percentage point.
1994 John Ashcroft senatorial campaignIn 1993,
according to the
New York
Times, Karl Rove & Company was paid $300,000 in
consulting fees by Ashcroft's successful 1994 Senate campaign.
Ashcroft paid Rove's company more than $700,000 over the course of
three campaigns.
1994 George W. Bush gubernatorial
campaignIn 1993, Rove began advising George W. Bush in his
successful campaign to become governor of Texas. Bush announced his
candidacy in November 1993. By January 1994, Bush had spent more
than $600,000 on the race against incumbent Democrat
Ann Richards, with $340,000 of that paid to
Rove's firm.
Rove has been accused of using the
push
poll technique to call voters to ask such things as whether
people would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards
if [they] knew her staff is dominated by
lesbians." Rove has denied having been involved in
circulating these rumors about Richards during the campaign,
although many critics nonetheless identify this technique,
particularly as utilized in this instance against Richards, as a
hallmark of his career.
1996 Harold See's campaign for Associate Justice, Alabama
Supreme CourtA former campaign worker charged that, at
Rove's behest, he distributed flyers that anonymously attacked
Harold See, their own client. This put
the opponent's campaign in an awkward position; public denials of
responsibility for the scurrilous flyers would be implausible.
Rove's client was elected.
1998 George W. Bush gubernatorial
campaignRove was an adviser for Bush's 1998 reelection
campaign. From July through December 1998, Bush's reelection
committee paid
Rove & Co. nearly $2.5 million,
and also paid the Rove-owned Praxis List Company $267,000 for use
of mailing lists. Rove says his work for the Bush campaign included
direct mail, voter contact, phone banks, computer services, and
travel expenses. Of the $2.5 million, Rove said,
"[a]bout 30
percent of that is postage". In all, Bush (primarily through
Rove's efforts) raised $17.7 million, with $3.4 million unspent as
of March 1999.
2000 Harold See campaign for Chief
JusticeFor the race to succeed Perry Hooper, who
was retiring as Alabama
's chief justice, Rove lined up support for See from
a majority of the state's important Republicans.
2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign and the sale of Karl
Rove & Co.
In early 1999, Rove sold his 20-year-old direct-mail business,
Karl Rove & Co., which provided campaign
services to candidates, along with
Praxis List
Company (in whole or part) to Ted Delisi and Todd Olsen,
two young political operatives who had worked on campaigns of some
other Rove candidates. Rove helped finance the sale of the company,
which had 11 employees. Selling
Karl Rove &
Co. was a condition that
George
W. Bush had insisted on before
Rove took the job of chief strategist for Bush's presidential
bid.
During
the 2000 Republican
primary, a South
Carolina
push poll used racist
innuendo intended to undermine the support of then-Bush rival
John McCain:"Would you be
more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if
you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" The
authors of the 2003 book and subsequent film
Bush's
Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush
Presidential, allege that Rove was involved. In the movie,
John Weaver,
political director for McCain's 2000 campaign bid, says
"I
believe I know where that decision was made; it was at the top of
the [Bush] campaign". McCain campaign manager Richard Davis
said he
"had no idea who had made those calls, who paid for
them, or how many were made"; Rove denied any
involvement.
After the
presidential
elections in November 2000, Rove organized an emergency
response of Republican politicians and supporters to go to Florida
to assist the Bush campaign's position during the
recount.
George W. Bush Administration

Rove with George W. and Laura
Bush
When George W. Bush was first inaugurated in January 2001, Rove
accepted an appointment as Senior Advisor to the President.
Rove's detractors have claimed he was involved in
dirty tricks. One oft-cited example is that
terror warnings were regularly made at times when
John Kerry's ratings rose during the
2004 presidential
election. Democratic candidate and former Vermont Governor
Howard Dean directly accused Rove of
involvement in terror warning manipulation, stating "I suppose
that's Karl Rove's MO still." Another example is the 2006
announcement that planned terrorist attacks had been thwarted,
which was made soon after the Bush administration's
warrantless wiretapping program was
discovered. Rove was reassigned from his policy development role to
one focusing on strategic and tactical planning in April 2006, the
same month that
Joshua Bolten replaced
Andrew Card as
White House Chief of Staff.
On August 16, 2007, in response to Rove’s resignation announcement,
PBS journalist Bill Moyers, claimed Rove had confided to friends
that he was an agnostic. Moyers said, in part. . ."you have to
wonder how all those folks on the Christian right must feel
discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a secular
skeptic, a manipulator. . .on his last play of the game all Karl
Rove had to offer them, was a Hail Mary pass, while telling himself
there’s no one there to catch it." [56] Rove complained to the PBS
ombudsman, Michael Getler who found no basis in fact for Moyer's
claim, noting Moyers had sourced his assertion on a blogger's
comments at the San Antonio Express. The next day, Rove made a
previously scheduled appearance on Fox with Chris Wallace and when
asked about Moyer’s comments, Rove said Moyers ". . .took a comment
where I acknowledged my shortcomings in living up to the beliefs of
my faith. . .to somehow making me into an agnostic.You know, Mr.
Moyers ought to do a little bit better research before he does
another drive-by slander.”
Activities since leaving the White House
Shortly after leaving the White House, Rove was hired to write
about the
2008 Presidential
Election for
Newsweek. He was
also later hired as a contributor for the
Wall Street Journal and a political
analyst for
Fox News. Rove was an informal
advisor to 2008 Republican Presidential candidate
John McCain, and donated $2,300 to his campaign.
He is currently working on a book about his life in politics.
Rove has also spent significant time on the road giving speeches to
schools and other groups. Rove was scheduled to give the
commencement address at
Choate
Rosemary Hall, a New England boarding school, but canceled
after protests from students and faculty. He instead made a private
appearance at the school on February 11, 2008.
On March
9, 2008, Rove appeared at the University of Iowa
as a paid speaker to a crowd of approximately
1,000. He was met with hostility and two students were
removed by police after attempting a
citizen's arrest for alleged crimes
committed during his time with the
Bush administration. Near the
end of the speech, a member of the crowd asked Rove if the school
could have the $40,000 speaking fee refunded. Rove turned down this
request.
On May
22, 2008, Rove was subpoenaed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman
John Conyers to testify on the
politicization of the Department
of Justice
. However, on July 10, Rove refused to
acknowledge his congressional subpoena citing executive privilege
as his reason.
On June 24, 2008, Rove said of Democratic presidential nominee
Barack Obama,
"Even if you never
met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country
club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall
and makes snide comments about everyone."
Rove agreed to debate one-time presidential candidate and former
Senator
John Edwards on September 26,
2008 at the
University at
Buffalo. However Edwards later dropped out and was replaced
with
General Wesley
Clark.
Rove, who was hired by Fox News to provide analysis for the
network's election coverage, defended his role on the news team to
the Television Critics Association.
On
November 3, 2008, Rove spoke on the campus of Washington
University in St. Louis
on the eve of Election
Day.
On February 23, 2009 Karl Rove was again required by Congressional
subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee concerning
his knowledge of the US Attorney firings and the alleged political
prosecution of former Alabama Governor
Don
Siegelman but did not appear on this date. He and former
White House Counsel Harriet Miers have since agreed to testify
under oath before congress about these matters.
On July 7, 2009, and July 30, 2009, Karl Rove testified before the
House Judiciary Committee regarding questions about the dismissal
of seven U.S. Attorneys under the Bush Administration. Rove was
also questioned regarding the federal prosecution of former Alabama
Governor Don Siegleman who was convicted of fraud. The Committee
concluded that Rove had played a significant role in the attorney
firings. No conclusions were made public regarding Siegleman’s
prosecution.
[710193].
[710194]. Siegleman’s supporters have claimed
that Rove was behind Siegleman’s prosecution
[710195],
although Siegleman’s defense made no such claim either at his
original trial, nor at his appeal before the 11th Circuit Court
which upheld his conviction on the bribery and fraud counts, but
dismissed two counts of mail fraud.
[710196]. The 11th Circuit handed down its decision
March 6, 2009.
[710197].
Fictional portrayals
Rove has been portrayed, caricatured, and parodied in a number of
films and television shows. On the comedic side, he was portrayed
by
Kurt Fuller in the
sitcom That's My
Bush!, and voiced by
Kevin
Federline in the animated series
Lil'
Bush. He has also been portrayed in an episode of
Family Guy ("
E. Peterbus
Unum") and an episode of
American
Dad! ("
Deacon Stan,
Jesus Man").
On the dramatic side, he was portrayed by
Toby Jones in
Oliver
Stone's 2008 film
W., a
biopic of George W. Bush.
References
External links
Biographical data
- TheAtlantic.com - 'Karl Rove in a Corner: Karl Rove is
at his most formidable when running close races, and his skills
would be notable even if he used no extreme methods', Joshua Green,
Atlantic Monthly
(November, 2004)
- Right Web profile of Karl Rove
- Famous Texans - Karl Rove
- Chronology - Karl Rove's life and political
career "Karl Rove - The Architect", Frontline Public Broadcasting
System (PBS). April 12, 2005.
- Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the
Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W.
Bush, Lou Dubose, Jan Reid
and Carl Cannon, 2003, Paperback, 256 pages, ISBN
1-58648-192-4.
- Bush's
Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush
Presidential, James C. Moore and Wayne Slater, John
Wiley and Sons, 2003, hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN 0-471-42327-0, and
the film of the same name
Editorials
Media accounts
- New York Times - 'Reporter Says He First
Learned of C.I.A. Operative From Rove,' Lorne Manly and David
Johnston (July 18, 2005)
- BBC.co.uk - 'Drawing up Blueprints for Bush
Victory', Rachel Clarke, BBC (November 6,
2004)
- BNFP.org - 'The Controller: Karl Rove is
working to get George Bush reelected, but he has bigger plans'
(profile), Nicholas Lemann
The New Yorker (May 12,
2003)
- The Guardian 'The brains' - Profile of
Karl Rove - Special Report US Elections 2004, Julian Borger, (March
9, 2004)
- The Atlantic 'Karl Rove in a Corner', Joshua
Green, The Atlantic (November
2004)
- EditorAndPublisher.com - 'MSNBC Analyst and a Newsweek
Reporter Say Karl Rove Named in Matt Cooper Documents', Greg
Mitchell (July 2, 2005)
- FoxNews.com - 'White House 'Puzzled' Over Rove
Flap', Fox News (June 24, 2005)
- PBS.org - 'Karl Rove The Architect' (documentary),
PBS Frontline (April 12, 2005)
- WashingtonTimes.com - 'Rove rejects charges he
was CBS source', Stephen Dinan, Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times (July 2, 2005)
- National Review - 'Lawyer: Cooper "Burned"
Karl Rove' - Byron York.
- Transcript from CNN interview with Joseph Wilson, where he states that "my
wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her
identity", causing much speculation about his intended meaning from
both sides.
- Washington Times - 'Rove Fight
Escalates', includes quotes from a former CIA agent who claims that
Plame's 'nonofficial cover' did not qualify her as 'a covert
agent'. This claim is based on a gross misquote of USA
Today.
- NPR's Daniel
Schorr discusses Rove's efforts to discredit Joseph C. Wilson and the
surrounding scandal (July 13, 2005) (Real Audio)
- Star Tribune - 'The Plame blame: What
do we know so far?' contains a recap of what is known to date (July
17, 2005)
- National Review - Andrew C. McCarthy on Valerie Plame'; provides a link to
an amicus brief and also details Plame's name having being outed by
the CIA prior to Novak's article.
- NationalReview - Mark R. Levin - 'Valerie's No Victim' - about Valerie
Plame
- Wall Street Journal - Staff - 'Memo
Underscored Issue of Shielding Plame's Identity' - CIA memo at the
center of the leak scandal was marked 'sensitive'
- Washington Post - "Role of Rove, Libby
in CIA Leak Case Clearer: Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony
Contradicts Earlier White House Statement"
- RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman Statement On The Partisan Attack
On Karl Rove
- Prosecutors tell Rove: No charges By John
Solomon, ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 13, 2006
- Plame sues White House figures over CIA leak MSNBC,
June 13, 2006
- New York Daily News -Rove on the
United States Constitution and the separation between church and
state in schools, September 3, 2006
News compilations
U.S. Government links