http://www.thenation.com/docPrint.mhtml?i=20010305&s=dubose
Bush's Hit Man
by LOUIS DUBOSE
In early December 1999, George W. Bush's chief political strategist, Karl
Rove, and Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater squared off in the
Manchester, New Hampshire, airport. Rove was angry over a story Slater had
written suggesting that it was plausible that Rove was behind the whispering
campaign that warned that Senator John McCain--then soaring in the GOP
presidential primary polls--might any day unravel because he had been under
so much pressure when he was tortured as a POW in Vietnam.
In a 700-word article that Slater said wasn't the most significant thing he'd
written about Rove, he referred to questionable campaign tactics attributed
to Rove: teaching College Republicans dirty tricks; spreading a rumor that
former Texas Governor Ann Richards was too tolerant of gays and lesbians;
circulating a mock newspaper that featured a story about a former Democratic
governor's drinking and driving when he was a college student; spreading
stories about Texas official Jim Hightower's alleged role in a contribution
kickback scheme; and alerting the press to the fact that Lena Guerrero, a
rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, had lied about graduating from
college. Rove was explicitly linked by testimony and press reports to all but
the gay and lesbian story; the college incident had been so widely reported
for fifteen years that it was essentially part of the common domain. Slater
also reported that primary candidates Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer blamed the
Bush camp for the smear campaign.
"He said I had harmed his reputation," Slater recalls. Says another reporter
who was traveling with Bush, "It was pretty heated. They were nose to nose.
Rove was furious and had his finger in Slater's chest." Adds the same
reporter, "What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter
concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain."
That Karl Rove, who, according to the White House press office is not giving
interviews, hasn't always abided by the Marquess of Queensberry rules of
political engagement is not exactly breaking news. As long ago as 1989, when
Rove collaborated with an FBI agent investigating Hightower, the then-Texas
agricultural commissioner complained about "Nixonian dirty tricks."
That was at a time when Rove was a big player only in Texas. Since then, he
has become George W. Bush's closest adviser, directed Bush's presidential
campaign and is now working in an office just down the hall from the most
powerful official in the world. Some wonder to what extent Rove will use the
power of the federal government against those who would cross the President.
Rove's past suggests such worries are not unfounded. "This guy is worse than
Haldeman and Ehrlichman," a source who worked in Hightower's office twelve
years ago said in a recent interview, referring to Nixon's advisers at the
time of the Watergate break-in. "He'll have an enemies list." The interview
ended with a request common among sources speaking about Rove, even those no
longer involved in politics: "I'd prefer you didn't quote me on this."
Rove operates from deeply held conservative beliefs, which were shaped when
he was a child growing up in Utah. His sister told Miriam Rozen of the Dallas
Observer that as a child Rove had a Wake Up America poster hanging above his
bed. Rove has said that while going to college, he was never inclined to
identify with the antiwar movement and supported the troops because "it was
hard to sympathize with all those Commies." The "die-hard Nixonite" remains
deeply resentful of the legacy of the counterculture of the sixties. Visitors
to his Austin office would often leave with a copy of The Dream and the
Nightmare by Myron Magnet, a Manhattan Institute fellow who argues that the
political and cultural left corrupted the nation's poor and deprived them of
the work ethic they now need to lift themselves out of poverty. Rove is an
eclectic and voracious reader, and although he never completed college, a
self-taught historian. He is absolutely dedicated to George W. Bush, whom he
describes as "the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me
wait for a lifetime to be associated with."
Rove arrived in Houston in 1977 to work for a George Herbert Walker Bush PAC
run by James Baker 3d. Rove subsequently moved from Houston to Austin, and in
the ten years it took George W. Bush to lose $2 million of other people's
money in the oilfields of West Texas, he became the Republican Party's
premier political consultant. At the time of Rove's arrival, US Senator John
Tower was the only Republican holding statewide office. When Rove left
earlier this year to serve as a senior adviser to President Bush, all
twenty-nine statewide elected offices were held by Republicans, and both US
Senate seats were occupied by Rove clients: Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey
Hutchison. Almost half of GOP officeholders--includ
