Every Stone

Carville completed a question and answer for the Financial Times web site following a pretty hearty international response to his oped on Karl Rove. We got questions from Switzerland, Ireland, and Dubai, most memorably.

Surely the influence of Karl Rove is over-estimated? Could it not be argued that factors such as (i) 9/11 (ii) suspicion of ’liberals’ stoked up for many decades (iii) the combined influence of the religious lunatic fringe, greedy power hungry corporate interests, Fox news and talk radio, are all powerful factors in favour of the ’right’ and a Republican strategist hardly needs to be a ’genius’ to exploit such factors?
Ian Stewart, Galway, Ireland

James Carville: Let me repeat a story related by Joshua Green in the September issue of The Atlantic. Bush, Rove, Dan Bartlett, and Matthew Dowd are in Air Force One flying over New Orleans after Katrina, one of the worst disasters in US history. (I say “disaster” and not “natural disaster” because it was largely man-made.) An argument ensues. Bartlett and Dowd want to stop; Rove doesn’t. Bush offers no opinion, best I can tell from the source. So, how does one overestimate the influence of an aide who, against the wishes of two other aides, gets Air Force One to fly over the greatest disaster in US history? Karl Rove, on the other hand, would have you believe that his influence has been greatly overestimated. On August 19 on Meet the Press, he said that every Republican “ought to feel some responsibility.” That’s like saying the Rotary Club in Kokomo, Indiana, and the Chamber of Commerce in Meridian, Mississippi, are at fault.

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I think the damage Karl Rove has done to the USA with his heavy-handed, neophyte attempts at policy-making were disastrous, and they have contributed largely to the international hate of the USA. How long do you think it will take for the US to recover, if ever? What remedies must the USA take after this administration leaves office?
Joanne Thompson

James Carville: Call me naïve but I actually believe that people around the world like American people and would like to like the American government and the American president. As soon as the next US president takes office and shows that he or she has a sense of compassion and humility and understanding for the world around him, the world will respond.

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James, is Rove’s exit from the White House just another shrewd manoeuvre on his part to be the major attack dog against the Democrats running for president, now that he is not attached at the hip with the White House or any specific Republican presidential candidate at this time?
Michael Meniktas, San Francisco

James Carville: In a word, no. It is a result of the fact that he lost the 2006 election and with it a considerable amount of his power.

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Can Karl Rove continue to advise GOP presidential candidates? Would any of the candidates hire him and would they keep it a secret if they did?
Lindsey

James Carville: Yes, and yes. Any GOP candidate would love to have Rove’s advice, but he would prefer to keep it out of the public. Rove’s involvement in any campaign would be too strong an indication that the Bush administration was playing a big role, which would mean almost certain defeat in the general election.

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What were the most distinguishing characteristics of Karl Rove as a political consultant?
Sean

James Carville: First, a strong foundation. Rove was, bar none, the single-best cultivator of the press. He also had near complete power over his candidate in campaigns. Second, you get the sense that it wasn’t just that Rove didn’t care about the truth. There’s an old saying in Louisiana that’s applicable to Rove. He’d rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stay on the ground and tell the truth. In his exit interview on the Rush Limbaugh Show, he said worked for a president that always wanted to unite the country – then in the same interview called the president’s opponents a bunch of effete snobs.

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Professor William Hudson in his book American Democracy In Perilinforms us that it is the tyranny of the minority under our separation of powers concept that cripples our political parties in accomplishing meaningful reform and fulfilling their mandates. One observes that Mr. Rove repeatedly relied on narrowly framed inflammatory issues to motivate highly organized, extreme conservative factions to advance political power but, alas, for a far shorter period than he intended. Is there a way for a new president to limit the minority’s ability to derail popularly supported measures such as universal health care and immigration reform?
Robert Nichols, Dallas, Texas

James Carville: The simplest answer is, that this is a characteristic of the American system of government. On the specifics, keep in mind that Rove had a majority of Democrats with him on his immigration proposal. (Of course that didn’t stop him from blaming the Democrats for his defeat.) And part of the reason for our defeat on health care is that we didn’t, as Andy Card said about the Iraq war, market it well enough.

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If Mr. Rove is that much of a genius, why couldn’t he save the face of the Bush legacy and stay put until the end of GW presidency?
Talal F Salman, Dubai

James Carville: Rove is many things, but stupid he’s not. The Bush presidency is over. Who would want to have a diminished role in a failed presidency? To put it bluntly, he didn’t want to be a little fish in a little pond. And after all, the better part of the remainder of Rove’s life is going to be spent answering questions from Congress and historians.

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Considering Rove’s role was chief political advisor, what do you feel about the argument that he was a total failure in that he advised the president to historically low approval ratings? In other words, how good could his advice have been?
Travis Hampton, Virginia

James Carville: He won two big, difficult elections in 2000 and 2004. Any rational observer has to give him enormous credit for these wins. However, today this political party is lower than any modern political party has been in US history, due in a large part to Rove’s base-first strategy. If current trends hold up over the next two election cycles, historians will in all likelihood conclude that Rove was the most disastrous Republican ever. The biggest story in American politics is the almost complete collapse of the Republican party among young voters.

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Assuming the Republicans do poorly in the 2008 elections, is the Republican brand so damaged that a third party (say Libertarian Party) might emerge as a solid party for the right of center?
Fred Zimmerman, Dallas, TX

James Carville: It’s long been a dream of some people to have an anti-regulatory, low-tax, high-personal freedom party. All available evidence indicates that this party would have very little support. Such a party would likely try to dismantle Medicare, eliminate social security, and legalize drugs – that’s not a winning formula in US politics.

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Don’t you think his resignation is a well-timed departure from a sinking ship so he can work on someone else’s campaign or cause? Where will he surface? Could he even get Giuliani elected?
Aaron Smith, Brooklyn

James Carville: He won’t surface in the public world with a presidential campaign ,because it would invoke memories of the Bush administration, which would be disastrous for any Republican.

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John Kerry was that once-in-a-lifetime candidate who combined the verbal daring of a Walter Mondale with the personal magnetism of a Michael Dukakis. Doesn’t the fact that Bush had to eke out a narrow victory over Kerry offer adequate proof that Rove was no political genius?
Chris Dixon, Lexington, KY USA

James Carville: No. Kerry did win three debates. And Rove has to be given a lot of credit for the 2004 win. The Republican targeting operation in 2004 was truly remarkable. It’s very difficult to get the United States to re-elect a president they’d prefer not to, after all.

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Why do you think so many of Bush’s original victorious campaign staff like Karen Hughes, O’Neill, Ari Fleischer, Scott Mclellen all left the White House? Was it Bush that pushed them out or did they stop believing it was all worth it?
Amanuel Abate, Geneva, Switzerland

James Carville: To be completely fair, it seems that many of these people stayed around for a pretty long time. Working in the White House is a tough grind. I don’t know the statistics but I suspect, and it strikes me, that by historical standards, it was a fairly decent amount of time.

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James, what makes Mr. Rove’s embedding of political operatives at every level of government, to be…well… political operatives different from the Politburo of the Soviet Union that did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason…….to allow the party to maintain power? Have we become what we detest?
J.W. Mast, Greensboro, NC

James Carville: One of Carville’s life rules is, never compare anything to Nazis or the Soviet Union, so I’ll leave that particular comparison alone. Having said that, the stories that one hears about the embedding of right-wing operatives in the civil service are truly frightening. The next president might want to order a review of hold-over appointees and civil service appointees to make sure that competence and not ideology was the basis upon which these people were selected.

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What qualifications do you have for giving a balanced, non-partisan, assessment of Karl Rove’s legacy?
Ted Willi, Atlanta GA

James Carville: I praised his strategic abilities rather effusively in Time magazine in April 2005. To the second, I found very few people who disagreed with my op-ed in the FT. My basic conclusion was that the six-and-a-half years he spent as a high-level government official were an utter disaster. He was at the helm of immigration, social security, Katrina response, and general and widespread breathtaking incompetence throughout the government. Not even the most loyal and partisan Republican can draw any other conclusion.
Regarding his legacy as a political consultant, I am more than willing to give him credit for two victories, 2000 and 2004, that were accomplished under the most difficult circumstances. What I do contend, and quite accurately, is that as he leaves the Republican party is in the worst shape of any modern political party in the polls. If these trends hold up, Mr. Rove’s political career will be considered a disaster comparable to his governmental career.

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Whether we like him or not, Mr. Rove, has to his credit, brought Bush to the Oval Office twice. Given his undeniable talent to deliver elections, especially in 2004 and the fact he is like you a Southerner, why don’t you two work together?
Amanuel Abate, Geneva, Switzerland

James Carville: One could look at Mr. Rove and look at me and say, “I don’t’ think those two guys have much in common.”