Congress pushed Bush to war

[Zeuslax]

Karl Rove has stated that Congress pushed the white house to war prematurely. They weren't ready! They wanted to give the inspectors more time and try to build a larger coalition of the willing. I hate saying things like this, but what an absolute D-bag! He's going to reveal all of this in his new book and explain what the biggest secret of the whole Iraq story. Speechless!

[Dan Wishengrad]

One of the GOP talking heads recently opined on t.v. that the reason Bush's presidency has been such an abysmal failure is because he has relied too much on Rove all along. The guy (maybe it was George Will?) said that while Rove may be a "genius" at politics -- if you count smear tactics as evidence of genius and believe the ends always justify the means -- but that he is horribly incompetent at designing and implementing actual policy. Bush's biggest mistake was rewarding Rove for getting him elected by giving him such a free hand to shape administration policy. W. may have believed his own campaign slogan that he was a "uniter not a divider", but he entrusted stewardship of our country to maybe the biggest "divider" of all time.

Karl Rove can blame everyone else for this White House's performance these past seven years, but all he really needs to do is look in a mirror.

[Zeuslax]

I guess Rove never heard of the Downing Street Memo or the web site www.whitehouse.gov! Does this guy really believe he can rewrite history? Maybe his genius is like Chauncey Gardner’s in Being There? I’ll go with the later..........

Dan wrote:

Bush's biggest mistake was rewarding Rove for getting him elected by giving him such a free hand to shape administration policy.

This is probably one of the least understood issues about Rove's role in this administration. It is very dangerous when you see how much power a political advisor was given in regards to handling and shaping policy. His position’s involvement with policy was most definitely unethical on many occasions. The comparison most certainly can not be made with the larger role we see the VP's office taking now a days. Policy is not about triangulation. It is grounded in the real world. So his legacy will most likely be that he was a brilliant campaigner (the Republicans most likely would have lost up to 20 more seats in the house in 2006 if it wasn't for him), but a disaterous policy advisor. Let's not forget his greatest achievement........

Ohh yea, the other jewel of his Charlie Rose interview was, "if the Democratic congress would only behave themselves we would be able to get something done in this country". This is probably his biggest error in thinking. You can not view compromise as a bulldozer.

[KnoxVegas]

Does this guy really believe he can rewrite history?

Of course. Right now they are the victors and those are the chosen lot that gets to write the history (for now). Never mind the facts. Never mind the Congressional Record. Never mind Lexus-Nexus. This administration and their minions have been doing this since the Florida recount.

Rove is just protecting Bush's legacy and Bush has said all along that history will judge him. Rove is just fixing that history to reflect that Bush has been one of, if not, the greatest president... ever.

I am surprised that no one has mention the pact that White House and the Iraqi government signed on Monday:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/26/us.iraq.ties/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-1.html

[Zeuslax]

SCARBOROUGH: We have to start with something that we all are talking about a couple of days ago where Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and he blamed the Democrats for pushing him and the president into war. Is that how it worked?

CARD: No, that's not the way it worked.

Card went on to explain that sometimes Rove's "mouth gets ahead of his brain":

SCARBOROUGH: Is that just Karl spinning beyond the White House? ...

CARD: Well, Karl is very smart. He's -- sometimes his brain gets ahead of his mouth. And sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his brain.