The Demise of the Bush Presidency

US President George Bush’s closest ally and “boy genius” Karl Rove resigned from the Bush White House as Deputy Chief of Staff. While the official designation may not seem significant, Rove along with Vice President Dick Cheney were behind every policy initiative taken by the Bush administration. Be it election strategy, domestic policy or the war in Iraq, Rove left his mark on every issue that the Bush administration has faced up to or skirted around. The Bush-Rove partnership goes back to close to two decades when the men from Texas became a formidable force that installed George Bush as the Governor of Texas. From then on Bush political fortunes have been keenly tied with the decisions taken by Rove as his point person for policy during his campaign trails and then in the two terms at the White House.

In 2000, Bush faced a popular incumbent vice president in Al Gore as his opponent for the White House. Karl Rove quickly seized the idea to bring to the fore issues of morality and dignity of the highest office of the land. He pandered (though indirectly) the Clinton years as ones which saw an increase in ‘liberal’ mindsets and an approval of gay marriages and abortion. He was quick to highlight the fact that the President of the United States must enjoy the respect of the nation, thereby implying that with the Democrats in the White House, expect the President to be caught with his pants down, quite literally. He then went on to coin the term “compassionate conservatism” which was a centrist approach to press independents and Democrats to vote for Bush. The ploy worked and a new wave of conservatism movement, the first after the Reagan years, swept the mid-west and Red states of the United States.

The crucial war on terror and the war in Iraq were also the handiwork of Karl Rove. Rove, though not a neo-conservative himself, was greatly influenced by neo-conservative writers and the movement which prophesized that as the only superpower in the world, it was incumbent on the United States to take a leading role in the world and if it meant invading foreign countries for the benefit of the country and her allies then it was a route worth taking. The unilateralism that Bush showed as the US went to war in Iraq was a direct fallout of the impact the neoconservative movement had on the administration and the messenger advocating the neoconservative principles in this case was Rove.

But the 2004 election Bush victory will remain the greatest achievement for Karl Rove. Faced with sagging popularity figures and a war that many felt was a diversion to the real war on terror, George Bush again turned to the man he has described as the “boy genius”. Rove turned around the very question about the reasons to go to war in Iraq, which was the Democrats main big ticket issue. He instead turned the tables on the Democrats and went to the voters with the simple message, we are a nation at war and George Bush, not John Kerry is the man fit to lead. The ploy worked and Bush got what his father couldn’t – the second term at the White House. And in doing so, Rove proved that as a strategist if you can turn your disadvantages to your advantage, the race is all but yours. In 2004 he proved his worth to his detractors who were voicing their concern over the ear time Rove got with the President.

Since 2004, though, the going has been tough for the Bush administration both domestically and internationally. 2005 was a disastrous year for Iraq and the chopping and changing of the military leadership had all the hallmarks of ‘Rovism’. At home, the White House got embroiled in the Valerie Plame spy scandal which saw Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby being sentenced to prison time. Many believed that Libby was the scapegoat for Rove, but due his indispensability, Libby and not Rove paid the price. Immigration reforms which is a major issue in the border states including Texas, from where both Bush and Rove hail, was a key policy initiative taken by Bush. The idea behind the bill to introduce the guest worker program for illegal migrants was meant to move the Latino and Hispanic voter en masse to the Republicans. However, the bill got stalled by the Senate and was ultimately given a quiet burial. The illegal wire tapping of US citizens, the appointments of judges favoring the Republican cause to the Supreme Court along with the firing of judges that were not “Republican enough” all weakened Rove in the last year of his current stint. Also the fact that many from the original 2000 team left the White House meant that increasingly Rove was surrounded by newer people who were not averse to expressing their views even if it meant contradicting Rove. With Colin Powell, Ari Fleisher, Scott McClellan, Dan Bartlett, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld all exiting the Bush administration, Karl Rove’s exit was only a matter of time. While the prospect of writing and publishing the most anticipated political memoir of this decade might excite Rove, he must be circumspect about how the dream of invincibility was shattered so soon after it began. The members of the original Bush team now walk into the sunset knowing fully well that their policies and decisions did not have the desired effect they so strongly believed in. And with that grim realization, the Rove exit also marks the end of Bush’s term which will not see any path breaking policy initiatives or strategies to alter the execution of current policy. Rove just pulled the plug on a terminally ill presidency that is waiting to go.