Immediately after his resignation, Karl Rove is going dove hunting.
According to CNN.com, a hunting trip to West Texas is the first item on his new agenda; Rove then plans to then “drive (his) wife and the dogs to the beach.”
His resignation is effective at the end of August, but Rove leaves the comfort of the White House’s subpoena-snubbing arms in a time when the nation has suffered as a result of an administration that he effectively ran.
And all Dick Cheney hunting stories aside, it is a downright sobering picture: a man called the “architect of the war in Iraq” shooting birds hailed as a symbol of peace. But few would find hunting doves on par with an all-too-lethal war between two nations.
That’s why the rest of his day really stings.
Before Karl Rove and company moved into the executive branch, there were many American families who enjoyed driving to the beach with their families and dogs. There were even many who enjoyed shooting doves. There still are.
But eight years later, following Rove-engineered and American-executed operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are at least 4,420 American families who will never have such luxuries again.
Rove is a political strategist. He is not a military commander, nor can he be held directly responsible for any deaths. But after over 4,000 lives ““ and more than five times that many injuries to people who pay the cost for his policy decisions ““ you’d think there’d be some remorse in his goodbye.
Instead, Bush introduced Rove by reminding the public of the “sacrifices” the Rove family has made for America.
Sacrifices indeed.
He worked hard to save Bush from signing the Kyoto Protocol, saving the President’s pen from wasting its ink on a document that the dastardly European Union ratified five years ago.
He logged countless hours, perhaps sustained only by the most meager of tax-dollar and lobbyist funded meals, slaving over PowerPoint presentations that by 2002 had already started reminding GOP politicians of the one true cause for America: “Focus on the war.”
He was even martyred for the sake of American levity by reinventing himself as the tuxedo-clad entertainer “MC Rove.” And while our more conventional heroes may say “I got us into this mess, and I’ll get us out,” MC Rove told the nation he got us into this mess, and he’s getting out.
The Boston Globe’s Peter Canellos evaluated Rove’s sacrifices quite eloquently when he wrote that while “historians will probably long debate just how much Rove influenced the Bush administration, there can be little doubt that the administration’s personality ““ combative, unyielding, indulgent of its supporters and contemptuous of its opponents ““ was shaped in large part by Rove.”
And what more could America have needed after a divisive and highly contested 2000 presidential election than some combativeness and a refusal to yield to other ideas?
How better could Rove have served this nation that Bush muttered they “both love” than by indulging his supporters and holding everyone else in contempt?
Rove’s legacy will likely be that of immense, bulldoggish power. Politicians will study his techniques and put them into practice. They will ignore the fact that Rove erroneously predicted that the GOP would maintain control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, which it lost. They will ignore that he created a war that has yet to find any sign of an end.
And they already have.
According to The New York Times, every single Republican presidential candidate has staffers who worked with Rove.
It will take time to see how America heals from (or retreats further into) the Rove-ian form of politics, but come the end of the month, one person won’t need to worry about it at all.
He will be enjoying his beach sunset, years of wars and fallen soldiers behind him. That is until he inks his publishing deal for the book he plans to write on Bush and begins doggedly campaigning for the next Republican president.
E-mail Makarechi at kmakarechi@media.ucla.edu. General comments can be sent to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.