Hey--Who's That Guy Next to Karl Rove?He's the client, George W. Bush, who owes his Iowa win to a
history-loving, manic strategistBy James Carney/Ames, Iowa
August 17, 1999
Web posted at: 10:03 a.m. EDT (1403 GMT)
Karl Rove doesn't come across as a man on the verge of becoming
the most renowned political consultant since James Carville. He
looks like an owl (with fewer tufts) and has an obsession with
history that seems quaint in the age of Jesse Ventura and Warren
Beatty. The morning before last week's Iowa straw poll--which
passes for a historic event at this infant stage of the
presidential race--Rove's client George W. Bush spoke to
supporters at a restaurant in Davenport while Rove lurked in the
background, a cellular phone in one hand and a massive biography
of Benjamin Disraeli in the other. What could Disraeli, the great
19th century British Prime Minister, possibly tell us about Iowa?
For Rove, that's easy. Disraeli was a Tory who championed the
common man, a "compassionate conservative" more than a century
before Bush turned the phrase into a campaign slogan.
Rove's passion for history and its precedents sometimes
exasperates Bush, who has been known to roll his eyes when his
chief strategist launches into a dissertation on, say, what this
race has in common with the election of 1896. But Bush owes his
phenomenal political rise--from a novice underdog candidate for
Texas Governor in 1994 to the heavily favored G.O.P. front runner
for President just five years later--in large part to Rove. On
Saturday, when Bush handily won the straw poll, the victory was a
validation of a risky campaign plan Rove devised late last year,
after Bush won re-election in Texas. The "yellow rose garden"
strategy kept Bush in Austin, and off the campaign trail, until
mid-June--leaving him just two months to organize for an event in
which other candidates had invested years.
The Rove File
Background: Born in Denver to a geologist and a gift-shop manager
Education: Political junkie, never finished college. Now teaches
at the University of Texas
Known for Electing Bush Governor and making Texas a G.O.P. state
Quirks: Discoursing on history and unexpectedly bursting into song
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But Rove's strategy has worked just fine so far. On Saturday
Bush received 7,418 votes to Steve Forbes' 4,921. Elizabeth Dole
placed a surprisingly strong third, with 3,410, denying to
Forbes what he wanted most from Iowa: the perception that the
G.O.P. contest had come down to a two-man race. There's a woman
in it now. But if Bush goes on to take the G.O.P. nomination and
the White House next year, Rove, who at 48 is playing a major
role in a presidential campaign for the first time in his life,
will be anointed a genius.
"No, no, no!" Rove bellows, grimacing at the thought--or at least
at the prospect of its being put into print. "There are a lot of
people working on this campaign," he insists modestly. "I am just
one of them." It is true that Rove is one of three fiercely loyal
top aides, dubbed "the Iron Triangle," who have all been with
Bush since his first campaign for Governor and who form the
impenetrable nucleus of the presidential operation. And it is
also true that Joe Allbaugh holds the title of campaign manager
and that Karen Hughes, the communications director, is closer to
Bush personally. But Rove is the intellectual and strategic heart
of the campaign, the one adviser to Bush who, insiders say, is
indispensable. "Karl plays politics like Bobby Fischer plays
chess," says Mark McKinnon, Bush's top media adviser, a former
Democrat. "He looks at the whole board and thinks 20 moves
ahead."
Rove has been thinking ahead at least since 1973, when he was
elected chairman of the College Republicans on a platform of
inclusion against a more purist conservative. He won that race
with the help of a young South Carolina operative named Lee
Atwater, who went on to become the take-no-prisoners strategist
behind George Bush's winning presidential campaign in 1988. When
he became chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1989,
Atwater advocated a "big tent" philosophy for the party. Rove
pushed the same philosophy after he opened a political-consulting
business in 1981 in Texas, where Republicans laud him as the key
player in the Lone Star State's final metamorphosis from a
Democratic stronghold to a Republican one.
Rove, who first met George W. in 1973, designed Bush's upset of
Democratic Governor Ann Richards in 1994 and then got the
political world's attention by making sure that Bush's
re-election margin in 1998 was an overwhelming one. The Governor
got 68% (with more than 40% of the Hispanic vote), which made
Bush an automatic contender for the 2000 nomination. "Karl knew
that a dramatic victory was the best way to launch the
presidential campaign," says another Bush aide. "So he ran up the
score." There is now a Republican holding each of the 29
statewide elective offices in Texas, and nearly every one of them
won with Rove's help.
Once an artful practitioner of negative campaigning, Rove--at
Bush's direction--has stayed positive in both of the Governor's
Texas races. But Rove still plays hardball behind the scenes.
When controversy arose recently over the fact that Bush's finance
chairman in Maine was an assault-weapons manufacturer, Rove made
sure he resigned his post swiftly, and quietly. And when the
bitter rivalry in the New York G.O.P. between Governor George
Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was looking like it might
sabotage the mayor's chances in a Senate race against Hillary
Clinton, Rove made it known through intermediaries that Governor
Bush wanted Pataki to patch things up. The reason: an easy ride
for Hillary would hurt Bush's chances of being competitive in New
York against the Democratic presidential nominee. (Rove claims he
did not broker the peace between Pataki and Giuliani, but two
other sources close to the negotiations say Rove got the ball
rolling.)
Despite Bush's dependence on Rove, the Governor's patience with
his guru can be strained. "The Governor's life with Karl is one
of continually trying to control his exuberance," says a campaign
source. Rove concedes that Bush likes to tease him for his
pedantic enthusiasms. "I am a constant source of amusement to
him," he says. And occasionally a source of embarrassment. In
1996 Rove dropped his $3,000-a-month consultant contract with the
Philip Morris Cos. Inc. because Texas was engaged in a
multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the tobacco companies.
He can also be an irritant to his boss. Bush doesn't appreciate
the widely held view that Rove is the brain behind the
candidate, and he has publicly reprimanded Rove for being too
chummy with the press. During one rough stretch in 1998,
according to other insiders, Rove was even barred from the
Governor's office (a story Rove insists isn't true). But mostly
Bush keeps Rove in line by keeping him off-balance, as he did
last spring, when Rove's cellular phone started chirping in the
middle of a high-level campaign meeting. The interruption
annoyed Bush, who had asked Rove to turn his phone off during
meetings. And so, after Rove left the room to take the call,
Bush looked up and said, "Lock the door." Rove never got back in
that day. But in Iowa last week, he was never far from the
Governor's side.
--With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington
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Cover Date: August 23, 1999
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