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More Book beastThe 10 Biggest Scoops From Karl Rove's Memoir
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Courage and Consequence hits stores today, and it’s full of insights into the inner workings of the Bush administration. The Daily Beast presents the 10 best revelations.
Washington is all buzzing with the publication of Karl Rove’s new memoir, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. In it, Rove lifts the curtain on the Bush presidency and aims for a clear-throated defense of his former boss’s policies. The revelation gaining the most scrutiny is Rove’s defense of Bush’s prosecution of the Iraq War (see Chapter 21: “Bush Was Right on Iraq”).
More fun, however, is finding out that Rove thinks John Kerry’s wife is a “nightmare” or that the architect of Bush’s two presidential victories was doing the terrorist fist jab before Barack and Michelle had picked it up. We also find young Karl Rove losing his first political fight—to a girl!
The Daily Beast presents highlights from the Beltway’s newest doorstopper.
Little Rove Gets Beat Up—By a Girl
Rove writes, “At the age of 9, I decided I was for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. I got my hands on a Nixon bumper sticker, slapped it on my bike’s wire basket, and rode up and down the block, as if that alone would get him the vote. Instead it drew the attention of a little girl who lived in the neighborhood. She had a few years and about 30 pounds on me and was enthusiastically for John F. Kennedy. She pulled me from bicycle and beat the heck out of me, leaving me with a bloody nose and a tattered ego. I’ve never liked losing a political fight since.”
John Edwards Was Too Pretty, Lawyer-y
“I worried most about Senator John Edwards,” Rove writes about the 2004 presidential campaign. “He was a fresh face, articulate and engaging, and attractive to the point of being almost too pretty…. I also thought he was completely unprincipled—he could change his views like leaves change their colors. He came across at times as shallow and opportunistic and, like the trial lawyer he was, too slick.”
Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. By Karl Rove. 608 Pages. Threshold Editions. $30.
‘Private Rove’
The relationship between Karl Rove and former Secretary of State Colin Powell was notoriously strained. Rove writes that on occasion Powell, a retired four-star general, would command him to do push-ups. “I admire Powell’s many years of service to our country and I think he was a fine secretary of State,” Rove writes. “But I sense he never felt comfortable around me because he looked down on me as a ‘politico.’ According to news reports, Powell was ‘put off’ by me. My impression was that Powell was a fairly effective political infighter himself, but it was something he liked to keep hidden from view. I could tell when Powell was annoyed at me, because he would address me as ‘Private Rove’ and order me to drop and give him 20 push-ups.”
John Kerry’s Wife: Not So Dreamy
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry campaigned against Bush in 2004. Rove knew Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz from when she was married to Sen. John Heinz. Rove writes, “Teresa Heinz was a nightmare: I once saw her throw a water bottle at a staff assistant who had angered her over nothing. I was told that behavior was routine.”
The Moneyball Campaign
• Matt Latimer: The Karl Rove You Don’t KnowWhere exactly did the Bush campaign of 2004 get their idea to “microtarget” voters, tallying up 225 pieces of information about each household? From a bestselling baseball book, of course. Campaign manager Ken Melhman, according to Rove, “summed up how it all worked for us by suggesting we read Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book is the story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager, Billy Beane… His players didn’t hit as many home runs or put up gaudy stats that got public attention. But each team member’s talents knit well with the rest of the team and made them formidable.”
Rove and Dubya Fist Bump
During the 2008 campaign, one greeting shared by Barack and Michelle Obama was dubbed by Fox News a “terrorist fist jab.” (Most people would call it a fist bump.) It seems Karl Rove was familiar with the maneuver. He captions one photo in the book, “On September 2, 2004, backstage at Madison Square Garden in New York City, I give President Bush a first bump before he goes out to deliver his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention.”
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Jeff Shesol is the author of Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court. He is also a founding partner of West Wing Writers, a speechwriting and strategy firm and the author of Mutual Contempt. From 1998 to 2001, Shesol served as a speechwriter to President Bill Clinton. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds degrees in history from Oxford and Brown universities. His comic strip, Thatch, appeared daily in more than 150 newspapers from 1994-1998.
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Gina Piccalo spent a decade at the Los Angeles Times covering Hollywood. She's now a contributing writer for Los Angeles Magazine and her work has appeared in Elle, More and Emmy. She can be found at ginapiccalo.com.
A former editor of Men's Journal, Claire Martin has written for Outside, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times magazine.
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Lynnley Browning is a frequent contributor to the business pages of The New York Times and is a former Moscow-based correspondent for Reuters, where she covered energy and commodities. She grew up in Tulsa, Okla., majored in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, and is fluent in Russian. She lives in Hamden, Conn., with her son.
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sippewissett
This is IT? The long-awaited memoir from the King of Thieves. These are the highlights? If so, I guess "there's no there there." These 10 bits read like a low-level gossip column, not a thoughtful analysis of Rove's nefarious role in bringing the U.S. to second-class status, assistin in the start of two wars we had no business being in, helping other nations to hate us and helping us to learn contempt for the Neocons' ideologocially-driven, divisive administration. Is Rove pretending he had no part in any of these? Guess there was no fact-checker on this memoir either.
floridabob
Could the scoop be that there was an ounce of truth in anything he said? Naw!
liberatorquest
The only fact is that the left has no class whatsoever, and couldn't recognize it, if it hit them in the face!!!!
Mauiboy
Liz Cheney, is that you?
textWreck
10 biggest scoops
that's what i can say about the dog piles in the backyard
any difference here?
airwinai
I'll be behind Tom Hanks at the bargain bin for this one. I wouldn't trust Karl Rove if he told me the sun was up.
liberatorquest
Tom Hanks should stick to what he does best, which is acting!!! You should just stick to being the useless, leftist, insecure little beaver that you know you are!!!!
GraffVyndaK
You say leftist like it's a bad thing. At least a leftist has the power to reason.
Kevlar
This guy is a piece of work.
"I got beat up by a girl..."
"Colin Powell made me do push-ups..."
"Obama thinks I hate him..."
Note to Karl: The General probably hates your guts because you're the exact opposite of the man. Turn honor, respect, and integrity around 180 degrees, and the result is you.
piktor
And you, sir, are 100% correct. Kevlar, I salute you!
duffybloom
AhHAHAHAHAHA!
Karl Rove doing a push-up? A single pushup? Oh my! That is a picture, isn't it?
Talk about straining credulity
DeaconDrJones
His description of John Edwards sounds like a reflection of himself...except for the part about being good looking, of course. Come to think of it, so does the part about Andrea Mitchell. Torture, anyone?
peppermint
Edwards and Andrea Greenspan are both scum. She certainly belongs on MSNBC along with the other suck-ups to the Obama bunch. Hope to hear Imus comment on this little sidebar. Of course then he was on that wretched channel.
Also, I completely believe Rove, why should he lie now, he's a private citizen and just defending all the smears he's had to deal with. In your face, Joe and Valerie Wilson.
liberatorquest
Long live Karl Rove, I´ll take him any day over Rahm,swinging dick bathroom bully, Emanuel!!!!!! Karl Rove is a patriot, of course the left has no idea what that means, but the rest of us will nod and agree!!!!!
areukidding
Yes, of course. The guy who outed an undercover agent IS a great patriot.
GraffVyndaK
If you don't respect the truth and help send thousands of American soldiers to their death, then he is Captain America.
Jakeson
Karl Rove is the genius that the rest of you could NEVER understand. Karl Rove is straight and can look you in the eye, whereas Rahm Emanuel gives the impression of a gutter rat sneaking around the garbage and attacking anyone who tries to steal a bite of that same garbage.
pacifistgunslinger
Rove has the balls to use the word "courage?" Courageous patriots might have troubled themselves to join the armed forced of this great country to defend it. That's courage, not worrying about whose tossing a water bottle.
Gwazdos
Karl Rove as you all know is a pure slim ball. the worst part here is a guy that should be in jail for his part in the outing of Valerie Plame, instead he continues to make millions with his lies to the American people. It would be nice to see that little girl that beat the shit out of him would come back and pound him again just for joy to the American people, i want a picture of it.
CrankyCuss
I'd like to find the girl who yanked Rover off his bike and send her a bouquet of roses.
And Andrea Mitchell went easy on Rove with the prison joke. I would have offered to hold him down.
lillyhammer
Rove brags about how he gave bush the fist bump before a speech in 2004, yet never once corrected one of the screaming monkeys on fox about the scary, terrorist fist jab...and then whines about Andrea Mitchell, who didn't defend a completely hypothetical joke about his prison experience. Really? Really?
blockaster
I have no intention of buying the book, let alone checking out a copy from the library. We've already been too seduced by Rove's brilliance only to be cheated by his disrespect for America and Americans. #1 Rove rule: stick with the lie until the lie becomes accepted as truth. However long it takes. I think corporate America is beginning to adopt this un-American 'value,' too.
DeeAmbro
Lies!
ratLips
Is that a Joe Wilson, "You lie!" reference.
mikekrohde
Rove created a political machine with lies, a two term presidency, an illegal, preemptive war, and trashed men and women of honor that got in his way. That a girl kicked his ass would explain his passive/aggressive back stabbing political behavior, there was something very sneaky about his whole personna. That he would cash in more millions on more lies makes sense. The lasting damage is a political climate fed by lies. The far right lives on them. Creationism, the Iraq war, Swift boat, Valerie Plame, their movement is based on fantasy that hurts the country. The Republican party is a minority party, and they have mastered mass communications to compensate for their lack of numbers. They sell pro-life with lies about abortion. They sell Creationism with lies about evolution. Their wealthy patrons sell patriotism and dodge the draft. That is the legacy of Karl Rove and his Republican friends. You have to admire their ingenuity, but the lies they peddle to activate their under educated, radical Christian base, cost us all in a dysfunctional legislative agenda that hurts the majority and makes our foreign policy a joke. We cannot continue to live these lies, India and China have adopted reality based economic and politcal systems that will beat us in the information age. It's not too late, but our time is coming. We cannot bomb our way to world domination in the age of the internet. We need to start listening to the people that live in the 21st century, not the flat earthers.
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