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Who is Bush's Brain?
The Machiavellian power behind
the throne of George Bush is
none other than Karl Rove
Excerpts from A
BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
With James Moore, Co-Author (with Wayne Slater) of "Bush's
Brain"
BUZZFLASH: In
your book you certainly provide factual evidence that Karl Rove’s
intelligence has been put to use for strategy over principle,
for anything it takes to win…So here's the proverbial question:
What makes Karl Rove tick? You mention at least a couple times
that it's a drive toward being at the pinnacle of power; I think
you use something like the phrase “the highest unelected
official in the United States.” Does he have an ideology?
Or is it simply to win?
MOORE: …In terms of ideology, Karl does have an ideology, and it is very fundamentalist, conservative, Republican to the right. If he had to pick a group, which he most closely associates with, that group is going to be very conservative, Christian fundamentalist Republicans. And all of the messages that the White House sends and the way the White House governs is to that base Republican core that Karl believes is the foundation of the Republican Party and its future, and its hope for election in 2004.
BUZZFLASH: Does Rove choose to have no enemies on the right for political and strategic reasons? Or because he himself is of that extremist ideology?
MOORE: I think he believes both. I think that he believes very much in that particular ideology, but he also thinks that strategically, if those people aren't there, and if those people aren't energized and using their mechanism to turn out their votes, the Republicans can't stay in power.
BUZZFLASH: Rove packages Bush as the "compassionate conservative" -- the images of Bush surrounded by black schoolchildren, surrounded by Elizabeth Smart, who had been abducted. The images America sees are not of the extremist ideology -- they're of a caring man, a caring President.
MOORE: Well, it's something I said all along. Compassionate conservatism in Texas is where they ask you if want green Jello or red Jello before they stick the needle in your arm and execute you. That's compassionate conservatism. But Karl's method for governance, which he has gotten this President to use very effectively, is completely cynical and it's based on the whole idea that we are all too busy to pay attention to the details of what's going on. We're all running around worrying about our mortgages and our 401Ks, and getting the kids to school or daycare, and picking up the dry cleaning, and planning vacation or retirement, that we don't read deeply into the story.
…And [Americans] don't go beyond the image to look at his policy, which is signing the "Leave No Child Behind Act" in a big, high-profile moment with Senator Ted Kennedy, and then gutting the heart out of that bill with the funding that he offers up for it.
The President has become very good at these phony linkages. … But if the President says it over and over enough, people will believe it, just as Karl Rove got him to say over and over that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11.
At time of the war in Iraq, the Pew survey showed 61 percent of Americans believed the canard about Iraq. So the whole concept is to speak as though you are a compassionate, sensitive, caring guy, and create these photo opportunities that prove that. But do whatever you want to do when you govern, because the public isn't paying very close attention. And they've gotten away with it thus far.
BUZZFLASH: …But how do you think Rove balances -– getting back to my last question -– the White House espousing the sense of absolute moral superiority, if you want to call it moral purity, with tactics that include lying, deception, and use of government agencies for political purposes?
MOORE: Well, the dichotomy exists within the collaboration between Bush and Rove. And you see it in his campaigns, and you see it in their governance. And it works this way: The President is oblivious, and chooses to stay oblivious, to the things that Karl does, and the contradictions about morality that Karl does. The whole concept, and it works in all of his campaigns, is the candidate or the officeholder takes the high road -- talks policy, talks moral clarity, and honor, and principle -- while the operative does all the dirty work down in the ditch, and splashes the mud, and spreads the scurrilous smears and rumors and whisper campaigns that have the desired political effect to keep the candidate elected.
And so they ignore the contradiction because they've sort of compartmentalized it in their collaboration. Karl has no problem with it, and the President has this rationalization that, well, I really don't know that's going on out there; I'm just saying what I believe…I think what takes place in terms of Karl and the President is almost a sort of selective consciousness…
BUZZFLASH: As you detail in your book, Rove has some interesting biographical notes. His father left the family; his mother committed suicide; he avoided service in the military and Vietnam; he never finished college. It's a very interesting background for someone who is probably the most powerful unelected official in the United States. And you don't get into too much psychobabble in analyzing him, other than to say perhaps this chaotic background left him prone to seek some sort of strong influence and sense of order and the authoritarianism in the Republican Party. But it is a sort of an unusual pedigree for what he has attained. After all, his biggest accomplishment up to working for George Bush the elder at the RNC was a record of dirty campaign tricks that he accumulated during his Young Republican days.
MOORE: Well, I do think that's true. And part of the direction he's gone in, however, is also a product of that background. I mean, he grew up in an irreligious family, and now he embraces fundamentalist Christianity in a very strong way. And he is very, very driven to achieve and to accomplish things that will be of note. … And I think it informs everything that Karl has become, because I think there was so much uncertainty that he sought clarity. He wanted things simple. He wanted them black and white. And he's found a President who thinks the same way. And unfortunately, life is not lived in the black-and-white zones. It's lived in the gray zones. And this President and Karl don't acknowledge that the gray zones exist.
BUZZFLASH: But let's take an example of what happened on the U.S. Abraham Lincoln…This seems to capitalize on what you just said –- that Karl Rove isn't concerned about the lies getting out, because that's [part] of an insider's story that the average American is never going to learn about or hear about. All the average TV-watching American sees is that image of the Commander in Chief landing on the deck there, triumphantly, in a pilot's uniform. And that's the image Rove knows is going to be in the campaign commercial. The White House all but admits it was preparatory for the campaign. And it's almost at this point that it doesn't even matter if the truth comes out, because when it comes out, it's really only being absorbed by a very select group of people. The country at large doesn't suck in the footnote information that reveals the charade and lies.
Where did Rove develop [his abilities]?
MOORE: [H]e knows the way the media works, he knows what drives it. He knows that if you get the big image and the big moment, you can use it. And he's fearless when it comes to intimidating the media and making them think twice about asking questions.
I was astonished by the Abraham Lincoln event because it is such an irony, and so hypocritical for the President to don a flight suit and take that flight because we're talking about a President who used family connections to get into the National Guard. He lost his flight status after four years because he refused to show up for his physical in 1972, which also happened to be the year that random drug testing was begun. And in his first campaign he said that he couldn't find his family physician to give him the physical. And then it was pointed out the military doctor gives these physicals. And then they said, well, he didn't go because he decided he would no longer fly, as if an enlistee gets to decide their future service and duty.
Punishment was issued for him to do civilian duty in Denver, for which he did not show up. He claims to have showed up in Alabama, when he transferred to Alabama to work on his Senate campaign. The commanding officer there said that he never showed up. I mean, he takes a privileged position in the Guard and then does not honor his commitment -- disappears for the last two years of his hitch and uses family privilege to avoid combat and making any kind of political statement about the War in Vietnam. And yet they have the chutzpah to put him in a plane and fly him out there, and think that no one will ask him about these contradictions.
BUZZFLASH: How have we gotten to this point –- to a point Rove's skill can be confident of success in a situation like that, despite the gross and blatant hypocrisy of the situation?
MOORE: They have a 24-hour machine that attacks. And it's constantly staffed and it intimidates and it distracts. …And any reporter who would deign to ask these kinds of questions of the Bush administration would get the White House in their face, saying: How dare you? And then they would be threatened with access.
BUZZFLASH: [What’s access?]
MOORE: They play this game of access [which is the power the administration has to deny any reporter access to the White House.] They know very well that once a reporter loses his or her access to the White House, their job is gone. And so the reporter is sort of intimidated into not asking these kinds of tough questions. This is a game that they perfected here in Texas. As a matter of fact, in 1994, when he was running for governor for the first time against Ann Richards, I was panelist in his broadcast debate. And I was the first person in his life to ask him the question, particularly in public –- how he got into the Texas Air National Guard when there a hundred thousand young men on waiting lists around the country that ranged from three to five years.
How did he get into the National Guard and avoid the draft? And he answered the question, not very well -– he didn't tell the truth. But after the debate, both Karl and Karen came up to me and jumped on me, and said: What kind of question was that? How dare you? Why would you ask such a question? That's so irrelevant. He served, you know. He was in the National Guard, et cetera, et cetera. And I said: Wait a minute -– I'm a few years younger than he was, and I know from my experience and my friends that we all tried to get into the Guard because it was a way to avoid combat. And we at least admitted it. And he's trying to pretend that no strings were pulled.
I said I have a sense of obligation to ask that question because I lost friends in Vietnam -- and I tried to avoid it myself. And I know the way the game was played. If you had family connections, you were safe. If you didn't, you weren't. And he's got ‘em.
The point is that they use rank intimidation to silence the media. And they certainly are not beyond going to management and asking questions. I had the office of former President Bush one time call a television station in Texas that I worked for, asking them why I had asked such a difficult question of the President during an appearance in San Antonio. Those are the games they play, and they work.
Used with permission. You may read the complete interview at BUZZFLASH.COM
Copyright 2003 by BUZZFLASH.COM
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Also See:
Karl Rove Comes of Age
an excerpt from the
new book
ROVE EXPOSED:
How Bush's Brain Fooled America
by
James Moore & Wayne Slater
In 1973, when
Karl Rove was recruited to run
for chair of the College Republican National
Committee, a group of supporters paired him
with Lee Atwater, who at the time was president
of the College Republicans in South Carolina.
Rove was to be the candidate and Atwater his
Southern
campaign chair.
The complete interview
with James Moore:
Who
is Bush's Brain?
Karl
Rove is, according to a book
chronicling the political life of the
Machiavelli behind the throne of King George
If
you are interested in
purchasing this book:
We recommend James
Moore and Wayne Slater's book, Bush's
Brain,
for anyone interested in the psychology of a political operative.
The book
reveals Karl Rove's techniques and activities. Rove is the antithesis
of a
man practicing a Christian faith. BuzzFlash editors said, "It's
too bad he
is the most powerful man in Washington, working on behalf of
the forces
of evil. Karl Rove would do Lucifer proud."
Bush's Brain reveals the thoroughly Machiavellian world
that Karl Rove
lives in. It's a formula to lie, cheat, steal and destroy if
necessary--do
anything to win. Winning is all. Bush's Brain explains
how and why Rove is so successful
in winning elections. It details exactly how he destroys a democratic
candidate, however
popular he may be.
Do you want to know
how
to detect evil? Buy these
books:
