What Karl Rove Didn't
Build
The long-term cost of
working the anger points
EDITORIAL,
washingtonpost.com on the Web, August 14, 2007
AS A POLITICAL operative, Karl Rove,
the White House guru who announced his resignation yesterday, has few equals in
modern American history. Like his Republican role model from the late 19th
century, Mark Hanna, Mr. Rove attached himself to an affable politician (Hanna's
George W. Bush was William McKinley of Ohio) and rode along first to the
governorship of a major state and then to the White House. Along the way,
Mr. Rove helped convert Texas from a predominantly Democratic state into a
Republican stronghold, helped the GOP win an unprecedented midterm election
victory in 2002, and engineered Mr. Bush's remarkable reelection over John F.
Kerry in 2004. Approve of them or not, these are not small
accomplishments. Mr. Rove was very good at gathering, analyzing and
exploiting information about the electorate. He cared about what actual
voters actually thought -- yes, including their "anger points."
At this moment, though, it's more pertinent to contemplate the political
might-have-beens of the Rove-engineered Bush presidency, which now appears set
to limp along until January 2009. Mr. Bush won elections as governor and
president because he positioned himself, under Mr. Rove's tutelage, as a
"compassionate conservative" and a "uniter, not a divider." After Sept.
11, 2001, not just the whole country but most of the world was prepared to
follow Mr. Bush on those terms.
But when polling data showed Mr. Rove that there was more to be gained,
politically, by intensifying support among the conservative Republican base, Mr.
Bush abandoned persuading the middle and focused on motivating the right.
Thus were born a host of policies -- on Social Security, Guantanamo, stem cell
research, same-sex marriage and so on -- that deepened the country's
polarization and helped alienate even old friends around the globe. The
quality of American political discourse was not enhanced by the (successful)
Republican attack on disabled Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, a Democratic senator
from Georgia, as soft on defense. And, over the long term, Mr. Bush's
short-term exploitation of Rove-identified anger points left the president with
less political capital than he might have had otherwise -- capital he badly
needed when the major initiative of his presidency, the war in Iraq, turned
sour. On immigration, Mr. Bush pursued a moderate course, based in part on
Mr. Rove's perception that the Republicans could not afford to alienate the
fast-growing Hispanic demographic. But, by then, the president had lost
control even of his own party's Senate caucus.
Mr. Rove is a history buff, and we think that history's ultimate judgment will
not depend much on his role in the scandals of the moment -- "Plamegate" and the
firings of U.S. attorneys -- to which some attribute his resignation.
Rather, he should be judged on his own terms: as the would-be architect of
a long-lasting Republican majority, like the one Hanna forged more than a
century ago. The GOP's wipeout in 2006 would suggest that Mr. Rove did not
achieve this goal, notwithstanding his brave parting words about Republican
victory in 2008. And if the manufactured polarization of the Bush-Rove
years did not even serve its ostensible purpose, then what was the good of it?
|
