The White House press corps can be surprisingly sentimental. Take the case of Tony Snow, the departing press secretary. When Snow announced the return of his cancer, dry eyes in the briefing room were few.

The ultra-conservative Snow has been much loved by the mostly liberal White House media. Why? First, Snow is one of us. He is a journalist, albeit more commentator than reporter. Second, Snow is just a hugely likable man; that has nothing to do with politics or journalism, that is just the human dimension of the man.

Like many correspondents, I have known Snow for a long time. I first met him when he was editorial page editor of The Washington Times–a blithe spirit in a somber newspaper. This quality of being in some way lighter-than-air is the essential core of Snow, it seems it seems to me. It has enabled him to float above controversy, and to be forgiven views far out of the mainstream of even Washington conservative thought. That is Snow in his writing and broadcasting–especially the latter, where as a sit-in for Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Snow was more radically conservative than such fixtures of the right as George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

The public work of the press secretary takes place, when the president is in Washington, twice a day at the “gaggle” and at the “briefing.” The former is an on-the-record curtain-raiser for the day, usually held around 9 a.m. The latter is the half-hour, on-camera briefing that has become a staple of C-SPAN.

The private work is counseling the president and the top echelon of his administration on press strategy and the collective mood of the fourth estate. The press secretary might advise a presidential press conference, an exclusive interview with a network, or a session with editorial writers.

For the president to understand the media mirror, he and his press secretary must have rapport; a merely correct and professional relationship will not do the job. Mike McCurry, another popular press secretary, was highly effective because he and President Clinton were pals. I watched them joshing together on presidential trips and was involved in an incident in which Clinton was embarrassed by something McCurry told me on the record. McCurry said that Clinton did not understand the media or the Congress. Tough stuff. When Tim Russert challenged Clinton with these accusations on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Clinton laughed them off. McCurry and Clinton had rapport. Snow has been a frequent player in the Oval Office. He and Bush have rapport.

Others have been much less successful. Most notably in recent years, Dee Dee Myers for Clinton and Scott McClellan for Bush. Myers floundered and McClellan was stiff and uncomfortable with the media, suggesting that neither enjoyed the full confidence of their master nor an organic understanding of the media.

One of the most successful relationships between spokesman and chief executive was not in Washington but London. That was the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and her spokesman, the irascible Bernard Ingham. His reverence for Thatcher was tender as well as supportive. He once told me, “I’m trying to get her to rest more.” Phew!

Clearly, Snow has been good for Bush in the dark days of his presidency. Snow said he is leaving because he needs more money. This does not convince. At $168,000 a year, Snow is paid more than most print journalists in the press corps, and many broadcast correspondents. Snow may have made very good money at Fox and with a radio show, but he knew the pay scale when he entered the White House. He clearly made less when he was a speech writer for President George H.W. Bush and not much at The Washington Times, which is known for the modesty of its pay scale.

Is there something else at work? Has Snow wearied of defending policies he has lost his faith in? Before signing up for the press secretary job, Snow had been critical of the competence of the administration. Has that been confirmed from within? It is a question worth asking.

But I think it is about money, health and family. I believe that despite Snow’s public assurances that his cancer is at bay, he is worried about the future of his young family. Not all of his arguments have had unassailable merit. That one does. Good luck, blithe spirit.

]

Weekly World News, the outrageous supermarket tabloid, is no more. Yet its demise has been marked with national media coverage—more than was given to the deaths of former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre and many a worthy American citizen. I, too, shed half a tear for WWN.

You see, my hands are not clean. I once made a living on the dark side of journalism. I was the founding editor of The National Examiner, a shelf-mate and in time a stable-mate of the dearly departed WWN.

The time was l965 and the place, New York. Generoso Pope was allegedly making millions publishing The National Enquirer, and many quite shady publishers were out to get some of that loot.

Easily the most interesting publisher, and possibly the most reprehensible, was Bob Harrison. He had fled to New York from Los Angeles, where he had published Confidential, the notorious magazine, and in some measure had contributed to the establishment of the paparazzi. Harrison had organized a team of photographers to penetrate the private lives of celebrities, preferably in their bedrooms. The magazine prospered but the lawsuits proliferated. And Harrison was looking for a safe harbor in which to be outrageous.

In New York, Harrison had found the solution to the problem of libel: He would invent the stories and the people. Nothing would be true. Not one word. Photographs would be of ordinary people but for safety, these would savagely doctored.

Harrison had invented an art form that would be copied by others, most notably WWN. There would be extraordinary, unverifiable events; communications from the grave, 100-year-old mothers, midgets no bigger than teacups, and endless crimes and atrocities attributed to unidentified mob figures.

Even in his mob stories, Harrison was careful. Identifications were so vague that no one ever knew which mob. And he identified the mobs in a way that would not offend real mobsters. Harrison’s perpetrators and victims were in a parallel world: They could not be traced because they never existed. Safer that way.

The best of Harrison’s writers was an enormously prolific editor at The New York Times, Ernest Tidyman. He later moved to Hollywood, where he wrote the screenplay for “The French Connection.”

Tidyman’s success as schlock writer was that he got little things right, giving an air of authenticity to the great fiction. He was greatly helped in this endeavor by The New York Times’s library. In one Harrison-Tidyman fiction, an underworld figure ordered the amputation of a rival’s leg in a love triangle. Tidyman researched the medical possibilities of hacking off a leg without the victim dying from shock or bleeding to death.

One of Tidyman’s more intriguing tales was about a drifter who traveled the country, clinging to the underside of freight train cars. It was a possible but unlikely physical feat. Good enough for a Harrison-owned tabloid. Harrison differed from other publishers of his milieu, who tended to have a whiff of the low life. Not Bob. He bought his clothes at F.R. Tripler & Company, the distinguished New York men’s store, and affected a breezy, just-off-the yacht demeanor. He attended fashionable Upper East Side parties and was vague about his “publications,” hinting that he was an academic publisher. When I ran into him at a very posh soiree, he touched his index finger to his lips. What happened in schlock stayed in schlock.

The publisher of The National Examiner was cut from a different bolt. He made his money selling horse racing tips and was under constant investigation by the authorities. An editor who worked at night for Newsday and I were the sole staff–and we were, at least most of time, mainline journalists. We developed a formula that, in its way, approached People magazine. We would gloss the already glamorous, and lament those who had lost their sheen. We highlighted Hollywood jealousies, and were amused when mainstream gossip columnists grabbed our fabrications and ran with them.

After a few short months the distributor decided ours was tame stuff, and the paper was sold to a company that had seen the Harrison formula: Truth is trouble.

 

 

 

When Karl Rove spoke about them as the “Bush Family,” he did not mean the president’s blood relatives but the band of intimates who have been with him from the beginning, or at least had advised or campaigned with him. They included, of course, outgoing senior political adviser Rove; Alberto Gonzales, first White House counsel and then attorney general; former White House counsel Harriet Miers; former White House spokesman Scott McClellan; White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin; and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The family has been unwavering in its loyalty to Bush and he, in turn, has extended them the same loyalty. Indeed, Bush has often appeared to have fused loyalty with ability in his mind. Rice was a marginal performer as national security adviser but moved up to secretary of state. Harriet Miers, a modest lawyer, got Bush’s nod for the Supreme Court until the rage of the Republican Party derailed that enterprise. Now Gonzales, promoted to attorney general with a tip of the hat to the Hispanic community, is leaving in near disgrace: a victim of loyalty serving loyalty.

Gonzales’s loyalty to Bush and the family was such that he failed to realize that the attorney general has constitutional and quasi-judicial responsibilities that could come into conflict with the White House. He appears to have been so gung-ho to execute what he thought Bush and Rove wanted, that he failed to caution them when the law was endangered.

Gonzales, in his zeal and loyalty, was always on the accelerator when the brake was needed. As friend, as well as the senior legal officer in the administration, one would have thought Gonzales would have warned the president that warrantless wiretaps, torture, and a list of other measures designed to combat terrorism, were outside the law. Also, where was Gonzales when it was bruited that Miers was Supreme Court material? This misstep sowed seeds of doubt about Gonzales among conservative Republicans that would only be compounded by the White House’s stand on immigration.

Yet all of this Gonzales would have survived had it not been for the firing of eight federal prosecutors. On both sides of the aisle, it is believed that this was raw politics at work. Unfortunately for Gonzales, many members of Congress are former prosecutors. They respect the office of federal prosecutor. Even so, Gonzales would have survived if he had got his story straight. As it was, he did not. He was contradicted in public by his own subordinates, and was shredded on the witness stand in Congress by angry members of both parties.

The price of blind loyalty was paid with compound interest by the president and the attorney general. The “family” effect in the White House has, particularly in the first term, produced interesting but surprisingly amiable dynamics. Members of the family, led by Rove, derived special status because of their access to Bush. If you understood, as chief of staff Andrew Card did, that title could be trumped by the familial standing, well life in Bush’s White House has been, and still can be, quite pleasant.

Former White House speech writer Matthew Scully, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, paints a picture of friendly informality with something approaching sophomoric humor. Although the purpose of Scully’s piece is to check the ego of his former boss, Michael Gerson, now a Washington Post columnist, he lifts the curtain a tad on day-to-day life in this the most opaque of White Houses, and what he reveals is not a traditional place of feuds and conspiracies. Instead, according to Scully, it is a place of good humor and collegiate enthusiasm. In particular, Scully is generous to Bush. To his speech writers, he is full of courtesy and without the ego you would expect. A family man?

BODRUM, Turkey — Gulet is pronounced the way it is written. This seems to bother visitors who come to cruise the Aegean coast on these traditional Turkish motorsailers. Actually, one of the nice things about Turkey is that most words are pronounced as they are written–like Bodrum, the southeastern harbor town which is a center for “Blue Voyage” gulet cruising.

Gulets trace their ancestry to Turkish fishing and sponge-diving boats. But today’s ships owe more to the 1940s and the introduction of diesel engines or, you might argue, more to the 1980s and the introduction of large numbers of European tourists to the Turkish coast.

Yet gulets remain extremely distinctive. They are hand-built entirely of wood. While other materials could be substituted for wood, wood craftsmanship is still highly prized in Turkey.

Gulets vary in size from 50 feet to over 100 feet in length, with broad, rounded sterns and heavy wooden keels to facilitate sailing. But mostly, they ply the coast under power–their crews hoist the sails only when breezes are stiff, which is seldom in the summer months.

There are two ways to charter a gulet. You either book a gulet for a week, fill it with your friends and select your route through the Turkish and Greek isles, or you book a cabin–a “cabin charter”–and the crew selects the itinerary. The latter has many advantages, not the least of which is that the crew tend to head to coves close to their villages and one member, or more, will set off to visit his family, leaving the passengers to swim in the extraordinarily clear Aegean waters or lounge on the divans in the ship’s stern.

While the tourist destinations on Turkey’s Aegean coast are rapidly being developed, the rest of the shoreline remains as unpopulated it was in the time of Herodotus, the 5th-century Greek historian who was born in Bodrum. Pristine mountains slide deep into the sea, allowing the gulets to anchor very close to shore, and passengers to swim quite easily to the spotty beaches. (A warning: Most Bodrum Peninsula beaches are slivers of sand, strewn with stones and infested with sea urchins. So when you swim from ship to shore, it is a good idea to wear or carry some kind of foot protection.)

Gulets sail from Bodrum, but also from Marmaris in the Eastern Mediterranean, and a few other coastal locations. American tourists are few and Europeans are plentiful on Turkey’s Aegean coast. The close German-Turkish connection has made the coast a prime destination for German tourists, and even for corporate retreats. We learned on our cruise that DaimlerChrysler had hired a fleet of gulets for customers and staff.

We had been hoping to take a gulet cruise for several years and finally hooked up–via the Internet–with a tour operator that offered us a seven-day cabin charter, including food, for $730. It was so inexpensive we feared that we might be sailing on an untidy ship with brigands for crew. In fact, although we were on the low end of the luxury scale, we wanted for nothing and were served by an indefatigable three-man crew

Our cabin was comfortable with three windows, not portholes, and a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet. Hot water was plentiful when the captain had the generator turning–and he happily fired it up whenever we wished. We were asked not to put paper in the toilets which, not to put too fine a point on it, is because the gulets discharge directly into the sea. It was up to us to keep our small cabins tidy, and we were provided with one set of linens and towels for the duration of the cruise.

We were 10 passengers, one of whom, Deniz Ugur, a Turkish-speaking German who books gulet cruises and has taken 30 of them, said our gulet would only rate a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. But he added that he preferred the gulets at the low end of the market because they were more authentic than the luxurious ones.

If your idea of cruising is perpetual attendance at the buffet line, then the gulet experience is not for you. At three set times a day, we ate traditional Turkish meals, dominated by eggplant, tomato and string bean salads; bulgur, rice and orzo; yogurt; black and green olives; sheep-milk cheese; small servings of meat and fish; fresh fruit; and an occasional cake. All our meals were accompanied by fresh Turkish bread, purchased in the villages and towns that dot the peninsula. These oval-shaped loaves owe something to French bread, and are as common in Turkish villages and towns as baguettes are in Paris. One crew member did almost all of the cooking, in addition to his many other duties. And a French couple aboard our gulet, the Skorpio, who operate a restaurant in Lyon, had nothing but praise for the food.

Turkey is proud of its wine-making, which dates back to 3000 B.C. We found the red wines–especially those of Villa Doluca–to be extremely good, and the white and rose wines to be less memorable. Over the years, the price of Turkish wines has shot up, and on the Skorpio, a bottle was going for about $25–neither a bargain nor too punitive. Raki, an aniseed-flavored grape brandy, similar to Greek ouzo, was very popular with the guests and the crew alike.

Which brings us to the issue of Islam. You are little aware that Turkey is a Muslim country, except for the calls to prayer in the towns. The coastal tourist destinations are cosmopolitan and secular–few Muslim women wear headscarves and European women go topless on the beaches. However, as you travel east in Turkey, you are much more aware of the influence of Islam.

Turkey remains one of the safest tourist destinations in the Middle East. Driving on Turkish roads is more of a threat to one’s personal safety than terrorism.

While cruising the Aegean can be inexpensive and quite joyous, getting there is something else. If you are traveling from the United States, you have to fly to Istanbul and transfer to a local carrier to your coastal destination. We flew on Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to Bodrum. It was short flight and a short ride to the harbor. Our fellow French cruisers, who had not been well advised, flew to Izmir and then drove two-and-a-half hours to Bodrum.

The gulet operator offered us a few shore excursions, which included a visit to a white-sand beach on Cleopatra’s Island, in the Gulf of Golkova. Legend had it that the Mark Antony had the sand brought to the island’s cove from Eqypt for his lover, Cleopatra. We had the tiny beach to ourselves in late May. But during the summer months, it is overrun with excursion-boat passengers.

On a day trip to Dalyan, we took a short boat ride through the reed beds of the Dalyan River to Iztuzu Beach (called “Turtle Beach” by local operators). The beach is one of the last nesting sites in the Mediterranean of the loggerhead turtle. We did not see any loggerheads on the beach, just lager-head tourists.

Also on the riverboat ride, we saw the splendid facades of Lycian rock tombs at Kaunos, an ancient city near Dalyan, which suffered from endemic malaria.

We went to the hot mud baths near Dalyan. Give them a pass, unless you have children in tow. But do not pass up a visit to a Turkish hamam, or bathhouse. A Turkish hamam is a hot marble room, ringed with hot- and cold-water faucets, wooden buckets, sponges and soap. You can either scrub and rinse yourself, or let one of the attendants do it for you. Traditional hamams have sexually segregated baths. At the modern Bodrum Hamam, which we visited on our return to Bodrum, men and women wore swimsuits and bathed together.

Delightful as the shore visits can be, it is the gulet that makes the trip. The sea’s 60-foot depth keeps the water cool and the most popular activity is jumping or diving off the gulet into the extraordinarily clear water and swimming to shore. While the bigger gulets carry all sorts of water toys, the Skorpio was humbly equipped with a motorized dinghy to ferry us to shore, should we need it.

Even if you are a bit jaded by fancy cruises, taking a slow wooden boat to nowhere on the Aegean Sea is very memorable. We probably did not go more than 50 miles from Bodrum, but we traveled thousands of years down history’s ladder to places where, for the most part, nothing has changed.

Bodrum Bound

Travelers usually fly to Bodrum through Istanbul and will need a single-entry visa. Travelers can obtain a visa at Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport, but to avoid delay at the airport, get a visa before leaving the United States.

We booked our gulet cabin charter through Bodrum-based Aegean Tour Travel (aegeantourtravel.com, 90-252-313-0722, 3 Cafer Pasa Caddessi). Their charters run from May to September, departing every Sunday from Bodrum, and every Saturday from Marmaris.

Around Bodrum

The Greek poet Homer described Bodrum, known in ancient times as Halicarnassus, as “the land of eternal blue.” The city’s history goes back 5,000 years. During the reign of the Carian king Mausolos (c 376-353 BC) the city flourished. Mausolos’s white marble tomb, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, dominated the city’s skyline for nearly 19 centuries. By the early 15th century, the tomb lay in ruins. The Knights Hospitaller, based on Rhodes, used some of the stones to build the imposing Castle of St. Peter. In 1522, Bodrum came under the rule of the Ottoman Sultan Sulayman the Magnificant.

These days, Bodrum is known as the land of eternal play. There is a vibrant cruise and club culture in city and the nearby towns of Turgutreis and Ortakent.

Bodrum’s cafe scene, especially around the harbor front, is also vibrant. Before boarding our gulet, we lunched very well at the Tranca Bar and Restaurant (Cumhuriyet Caddesi, No. 36), which specializes in fresh fish. We shared a simple swordfish kebab and an Ottoman court dish of shrimp on a bed of smoked, pureed eggplant and melted cheese. And we had a splendid view of the Aegean and the Crusader castle from our terrace table. On our return to Bodrum, we headed to Kortan Restaurant (Cumhuriyet Caddesi, No. 32) for dinner. The restaurant is located in an old stone house. We both ordered the grilled catch of the day (sea bass), a bottle of Kavaklidere red wine, and watched the sun set from our sea-facing table. While Tranca and Kortan were pricey, Bodrum abounds with inexpensive cafes that serve everything from full English breakfast, to fast-food (kebabs, hamburgers and pizzas), to ice cream sundaes and Turkish coffee and pastries. We enjoyed Ali Baba and Panorama, two cheap-and-cheerful cafes facing the harbor.

Bodrum’s old bazaar is a manageable size. Two shops to try: Cercim, which specializes in copies of Carian and Ottoman jewelry, and Ali Guven, a sandal-maker known for his traditional designs with a modern twist.

We stayed a night at the Azka Otel, a big, modern hotel not from the city center. Azka’s rooms were clean but not cozy. The hotel had a nice beach and pool, where the mostly European guests parked all day. Water taxis–really converted fishing boats–left every 20 minutes for Bodrum harbor from a dock that was a short beach walk from the Azka.

He says President Bush makes the White House “a wonderful place to work.” He plans to “kibitz” with Bush on policy issues from “the outside.” He wants to write a book, but he has not kept a diary. He compares the congressional investigations and a subpoena issued to him to Captain Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick. His resume includes working at a twice-robbed convenience store. “Bush’s Brain,” Karl Rove, spilled out these and many other thoughts in a “roundtable” with reporters aboard Air Force One, en route to Waco, Tex., on Monday. The following is the official White House transcript of the 37-minute interview:

Q Some people have said — some of the political analysts have already said that this spells the end of — marks the end of President Bush’s political life. What do you think?

MR. ROVE: Absolutely not. Why would it? He’s the President of the United States.

Q Because —

MR. ROVE: Well, but look, every President plays a — even if they’re not running again, plays a big role in shaping the nature of the debate, the policy debate, which in turn has a big impact on politics. And you can bet, being as competitive as he is, that he’s going to use every lever he’s got command over, every power that he controls to continue to drive the policy debate right up to noon on January 20, 2009.

Q Karl, were you considering staying longer, to kind of bring home the ’08 elections a little? Maybe help from the White House to pave the ground, while the other candidates are duking it out?

MR. ROVE: No, we just — we started talking about this over a year ago and we just — we mutually reinforced bad behavior by constantly finding excuses that we could postpone the discussion. But now is the right time to do it. It gives — if Josh has thought through, and is thinking through — I think he’s thought through, if the truth be known, about how he wants to handle this, and this gives him enough time to both put responsibilities into some people’s hands and recruit people to step in to do other responsibility.

Q Do you have — in your last conversation with the President about this, can you tell us when that was and was he understanding, or was he asking you to stay at that point still?

MR. ROVE: You know, we’ve been talking about this for a year. I can’t tell you what time this spring, or late this winter where we sort of finally agreed. But constantly it was, like, we’d say, okay, both of us recognize that it’s time. And then we’d say, well, let’s talk about this again after the State of the Union, or let’s talk about it after the surge. But this was just the best logical point to do it, after Congress went out and before the fall.

Q Did he ever ask you to reconsider, stay on until the end of the term?

MR. ROVE: You know, here’s the deal, I mean, we talked about it. When you’ve got a good friend and you talk through it — look, both of us would have liked to have been in a place where we both could have walked out, where I could have followed him out the door on the 20th. But I’ve got a family, and I’ve asked my family to go through a lot and to sacrifice a lot. And this all actually started with things in our family, talking about what the future would hold for us. And as time went on it became clear that it was time for us to think about the next chapter.

Look, I love my job. I have fun. It is a joy to walk in the door. I have the most incredible colleagues in the world. And I know it sounds corny, but it’s inspiring to walk into the Oval Office, the tone he sets, you know, the good nature he has, the focus, the vision — it’s inspiring. And I deliberately used that word today because he just — he makes it a wonderful place to work. And my colleagues make it a magical place to work. And you have such a sense of satisfaction of serving the country and doing important work in combination with some really extraordinary people. And would I like to enjoy that right up until January 20? You bet I would; 526 more days of that would be great. But I wouldn’t be doing the right thing by my family, and it really is time for me to do this.

Q When was the first time that you broached the subject with him?

MR. ROVE: Late spring/early summer of last year.

Q Where —

MR. ROVE: It was in the Oval and it was just one day, and I said, you know, I’m beginning to think I need to think about is there a time before January 2009, that we need to depart.

Q — after-thought, or did you go in there to talk about it?

MR. ROVE: Look, it was at the end of a day and we didn’t have much else to talk about. He had a little bit of time on his hands and it just seemed like a good moment.

Q Do you feel like any unfinished business as you leave, particular issue or —

MR. ROVE: I mean, you know, look, that’s it — I mean, the President is an activist President. We face a big set of votes and discussions and debates this fall on Iraq, on the budget — which is not just about spending. Imbedded in each one of those appropriation bills are serious policy questions. We have initiatives on energy, on education, on No Child Left Behind, which is coming through, on health care. There will be a State of the Union next year, which will also help shape next year, as well.

So, look, there’s a robust set of issues that we’re dealing with. And, again, I’d love to be around for them. In a way, I’ll be kibitzing from the outside — he knows my phone number and I know his. But, no, there’s a lot of unfinished business ahead and we’re in the midst of some very important things.

And we’re winning some of these battles. The Competitive Initiative, which he laid out in the State of the Union, I believe last year, has just now been signed into law. We have No Child Left Behind, which we can either do by law or regulation — we want to do it by law. The energy, 20-in-10, which we can do both by legislation and regulation, some of it embodied in various legislative proposals on the Hill.

Look, the President did not come to occupy this office. He came to fulfill his responsibilities to press the agenda every single day he’s in office.

Q How frequently do you think you’ll stay in touch with him in the coming —

Q With you departing and with Bartlett gone, who’s going to fill that role of providing counsel to the President?

MR. ROVE: Look, the great thing is the President creates an environment in which people feel very confident. It depends on how quickly they get acclimated, but they tend to get acclimated quickly; where they understand speaking plainly and candidly about what you think is what he expects and what he rewards.

I’ve seen it. And you talk to people today inside the White House that served in previous administrations — not to disparage previous administrations — but the collegiality that they talk about is remarkable. And what’s amazing to me is the collegiality takes place in an environment in which people can have deep and serious disagreements about things — you know, try and litigate it through to a point where they come to an agreement, and if not, carry them into the Oval Office, and at the end of it, feel that the process — that they were heard and that they were well-served and that the country has been well-served by the decision that was made.

The President is really — look, he is focused on setting the tone. He understands how vital it is that a President gets unvarnished advice. He understands more than a lot of people how powerful that office is in discouraging people. You know, members of Congress — my office was 15 steps from the door to the Oval Office —

Q Did you count them?

MR. ROVE: Somebody did. (Laughter.) I think they must have been very long steps.

Members of Congress would be sitting there in my office and they’ll say, “I need to tell the President X” — and they’ll walk into that Oval and say, “Hey, you’re looking pretty today.” But he’s very good at — particularly with staff — teasing out what it is that they want to say and get people to say it.

Now, sometimes, to me the amazing thing is sitting there in the Oval, those two couches are as close as Jim and are to each other, and there will be a member of the Cabinet advocating one position, and there will be the junior G-man from some other Cabinet department or someplace in the bowels of the administration taking the other side. And that’s pretty remarkable to be able to create that kind of atmosphere.

Q So are you replaceable then?

MR. ROVE: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Q Is anyone else on the White House staff replaceable?

MR. ROVE: Everybody is. Except two.

Q Karl, are you going to go to any other campaigns, or even in an informal role? Or are you out?

MR. ROVE: I don’t intend to take a formal role. I’ve got friends in all the campaigns. I do want to see this President succeeded by a Republican. I’ll be happy to, if asked my opinion, I’m an opinionated person. But I don’t anticipate taking any formal role in any campaign, and if I did I would shortly thereafter die — check the whereabouts of my wife if I’m found dead. (Laughter.)

Q Karl, can I ask you, I know you mentioned your family as being a big issue here. There’s obviously been pressure that’s come to bear on you — the investigations and subpoenas and the like. Has that affected your family? Has that in any way figuring in on your decision to leave?

MR. ROVE: It’s not figured in my decision, no. I think they are only vaguely aware of the subpoenas. They obviously were more than vaguely aware of the investigation. And look, I’m realistic enough to understand that the subpoenas are going to keep flying my way. I’m Moby Dick and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab — so they’re going to keep coming.

But anybody who suggests the investigations had something to do with getting me out is sort of putting Congress in the position of being the rooster that believes that by crowing loudly brings the sun to come up.

Q But are you protected now, in terms of legality? I mean, because of executive privilege? How does that work now?

MR. ROVE: After I leave the White House the things that I’ve — the advice that I’ve given the President, my role within the White House remains protected; I do not lose privilege by leaving the White House — just as former Presidents don’t lose the privilege when they leave the White House. You remember that there have been instances where the current President, on behalf of President Clinton, has asserted privilege.

Q So what are you going to do? I mean, you know campaigns, you know the game. What’s on the agenda?

MR. ROVE: I have no idea. I’d like to teach eventually, but in the meantime I need to make some money. I have an employment record that I think would be attractive to any employer: I’ve worked in an industrial kitchen in a hospital; I’ve waited tables; I’ve worked in convenience stores and have been robbed at the point of a gun twice; I’ve pumped gas; I’ve babysat; I’ve cut lawns; I’ve delivered newspapers.

Q — really going to do?

MR. ROVE: I have no idea.

Q You have no idea?

Q Are you talking to any universities?

Q There’s no deal that’s in the works, at all?

MR. ROVE: No. The President has encouraged me to write a book. I will do a book.

Q But you’ve not made any — there’s no deal going, right, that you’re going to be announcing soon?

MR. ROVE: Other than I’ve done what everybody does, and that is talk to Bob Barnett. (Laughter.)

Q A book about — you have talked to Barnett, by the way?

MR. ROVE: Yes.

Q A book about your experiences? A book about modern campaigning? A book about the historical —

MR. ROVE: It’s going to be about the most important and interesting thing that the American people want to know, which is my relationship with you. With you. (Laughter.)

Q What’s it going to be? What are the —

MR. ROVE: I don’t know.

Q Is it going to be about political theory, running campaigns? Or is it going to be more like your experiences in —

MR. ROVE: I think it’s going to — I’m a student of history, so I’d rather talk about the history of this President and get in there, stay in there and be in there.

Q Not a thriller? (Laughter.)

MR. ROVE: We know the outcome of the true critical moments. (Laughter.)

Q Any titles?

MR. ROVE: Come on, please!

Q Have you kept a diary throughout this time to help you?

MR. ROVE: No.

Q So you’re going to be doing this on your prodigious memory?

MR. ROVE: That’s your characterization of it, but I appreciate the kind word that you had for me.

Q Do you have your own characterization of any effect you’ve had on the modern election campaign and electioneering?

MR. ROVE: I think there’s the mistaken impression, and then there’s the reality. The mistaken impression — in fact, I talked with a colleague of yours not too long ago about this, the idea that this is all about playing to the base; that supposedly the success of the two campaigns have been that the President played to the base of the Republican Party. Completely inaccurate.

I hope that this idea holds currency in the high councils of the Democratic Party, because it absolutely misses the story of 2000 and 2004, let alone the President’s time in office. The base is something that’s by its very nature a small part of a greater thing.

Q So what’s your advice to the Republican front-runner coming up?

MR. ROVE: Well, I don’t have advice — my advice is for the Republicans, which I think, frankly, has become ingrained in the DNA of the Republican Party, which is that in order to win, the Republican Party needs to mobilize a vast army of volunteers to expand the electorate by emphasizing an agenda that is prospective in nature, that looks to the future and says, this is what we intend to do for America, and is bold and clear, but is focused on saying to people, we know you’re not enthusiastic about politics, but if you love your country, if you care about the future, here’s a message that hopefully will attract you to coming out and registering and voting.

That’s why President Bush in 2004 got 25 percent more votes than he got in 2000 and became the first presidential candidate since 1988 to get a majority of the popular vote. He won 81 percent of the counties in America; he increased his share of the vote in 87 percent of the counties in America. He got a record or historic number numbers among Latinos, Jews, Catholics, women — erased the gender gap. And it was because — not because he played to the base but because he played with a broad and bold message that was able to attract — think about it, one-quarter more people voted for him in 2004 than voted for him in 2000, and he did that in the midst of an unpopular war, with a united Democrat Party, and being outspent by $148 million, which is, if you add up what the DNC, the Democratic 527s who carried Edwards raised and spent, compared to Republican 527s, RNC and Bush-Cheney, we were outspent by $148 million.

Q What accounts for his unpopularity right now?

MR. ROVE: We’re in the midst of an unpopular war, and he’s been hammered by the Democrats. But I would point out to you, the Democrat Congress is less popular than the President, and they got there a heck of a lot quicker.

As the war in Iraq — as it’s clear to the American people that the surge is working, the President’s popularity will rise.

Q Karl, your legacy, in terms of the Latino vote, you raised the percentages from 2000, 2004. Are you worried about that legacy for the party that you built in the current climate, and do you have a message for your fellow Republicans on immigration?

MR. ROVE: I am worried about it, and you cannot ignore the aspirations of the fastest-growing minority in America. We did that once before, and that’s why we were able to increase our vote among African Americans by 40 percent between 2000 and 2004, going from an incredibly anemic 9 percent to a virtually anemic 13 percent. And we better not put ourselves in the place with a vital part of the electorate that fundamentally shares our values and views.

Q What do you think of this misconception there is about you among the American public?

MR. ROVE: I’m not good at answering that, because I don’t — I really don’t naval-gaze, and I really –

Q You don’t what?

MR. ROVE: I don’t naval-gaze.

Q Do you think the public has a misconception of you?

MR. ROVE: I’m not certain I understand what’s — other than that I’m the evil genius, yes.

Q “Bush’s Brain.”

MR. ROVE: Well, that is — that’s not me. That’s an attack on the President. That is the critics of the President trying to be cute. This guy is a Yale undergraduate and history major, a Harvard MBA, and one of the best-read, most thoughtful people I know. Now, I know he likes to play sort of the Midland/West Texas — but he is smart. And the “Bush’s Brain” was, interestingly enough, a construct of two journalists as a way to diminish him by suggesting that he wasn’t capable of developing his philosophy or his approach or his ability to win elections; somebody had to do it for him, which is incredibly demeaning and really stupid. And I don’t mind saying that the two guys that coined it are stupid in their characterization.

Q Who’s winning your book-reading contest?

MR. ROVE: I am crushing him this year, second year in a row. He keeps using this pathetic excuse that he’s got the free world to run and that he’s leader of the free world, but I mean, that’s cheesy, I think.

Q There was a perception in the political world that you wanted to stay on, to maybe get the House back, and that that would kind of put the White House on a better footing if it’s a Republican. Is there any truth to that? Were you tempted at all to –

MR. ROVE: Look, I’m a competitive guy. I’m tempted to stick around when somebody sends a subpoena my way. I’m tempted to stick around for the next fight. I’m tempted to stay around for the battle over the budget. I’m tempted to stick around to see if we can get a standard health care insurance deduction through. I’m a competitive person.

But really —

Q So she said, “I’m going to leave you if you stay”?

MR. ROVE: No. But she did say, isn’t it time — do we really have to wait until January 2009 to begin — let me say this off the record, I mean, really say this off the record.

[Rove goes off the record.]

MS. PERINO: Let’s go back on the record.

Q Is there an empty-nest factor?

MR. ROVE: We want to be — we want to be back in Texas, closer to our family.

Q Who do you see winning the Democratic nomination, and what advice do you have for that individual?

MR. ROVE: I have no advice for that individual.

[Rove goes off the record again.]

MS. DANA PERINO: Back on the record.

MR. ROVE: I think any rational observer would have to say that Hillary Clinton is a prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.

Q And you’d include yourself as a rational observer on this particular —

MS. PERINO: Let’s do one each, and then we’ll finish.

Q Any few accomplishments that you single out as some of the ones you’re most proud of?

MR. ROVE: I’ll think about that in September. This morning, though, at the senior staff meeting, I was very candid with my colleagues. I said that the true story was that I was resigning in protest over our failure to establish equidistance as the principle in the germination of seaward lateral boundaries in the latest version of the act overseeing offshore drilling. I am the leading expert within the administration on this. This actually goes back to Grotius, who was born in 1598, and he wrote this in one of his earliest works. You’re all familiar, of course, with Hugo Grotius?

Q Do you like his position on international law? Because that surprises me, because he’s kind of pro-international law, and I don’t see that coming from your administration.

MR. ROVE: He was concerned about maritime international law and that’s where the principle of equidistance comes out in the determination of seaward lateral boundaries between nation states. (Laughter.)

Q Don’t encourage him.

MR. ROVE: And it has been upheld in two U.S. Supreme Court decisions and two treaties which the United States signed in 1958 and in 1952.

MS. PERINO: Ben, your question.

MR. ROVE: George v. Florida and Louisiana v. Texas, if you wanted to check it out.

Q By February we’re going to know pretty much the Republican — by next August we’ll know the Republican nominee. Are you ruling out that you’ll be working as an official adviser?

MR. ROVE: I won’t fill an official role, formal role in any campaign.

Q Is a Republican majority still within the sites of — a permanent Republican majority?

MR. ROVE: Permanent? Nothing in politics is permanent. Things tend to be durable. And do I think? Yes. Look, between 1896 and 1932, there were Democrat Congresses and eight years of a Democrat President. You know, the Democrat domination between 1952 and 1994, Democrat control of the U.S. House of Representatives, there were Republican Senates and Republican Presidents. In fact, during the period of Democrat dominance from 1932 until you pick the ending date of the New Deal, you have Dwight Eisenhower and probably Richard Nixon to account for in the middle of that, if you count the New Deal is largely dissipating by 1980. I think frankly the New Deal coalition lasted until the ’90s; I think we’re seeing the breakup of the New Deal coalition in the attempt by both parties to form a new coalition in the aftermath of it.

Q But will yours be lasting — do you still see 2006 as a temporary setback?

MR. ROVE: I do. But, look, I’m also realistic enough to know that it all depends on — the election in 2008 is important because the contest is — the electorate is so narrowly divided, albeit I think the Republicans have structural advantages, but I understand that it’s so closely divided that the outcome in 2008, 2010 and 2012 are going to have big impacts on the future.

MS. PERINO: Deb, last one.

Q How did you get the math wrong in ’06?

MR. ROVE: They were very close elections. There are 15 contests settled — the closest 15 contests for the U.S. House are settled by a grand total of 85,000 votes, out of 82 million cast. That’s just over 1/100th of 1 percent difference in the 15 closest contests. One of them settled by 71 votes.

The races for the U.S. Senate control, the U.S. Senate is determined by a difference of 3,562 votes, out of 60 million cast. So, yes — first of all, look, my role is to be an advocate. My job is not to be the paid prognosticator for the Associated Press or CBS News. It’s to go out there and truthfully put as strong a case as possible. And looking at the data, we had — we came this close to doing something which would have been really incredible, and that’s keeping the House and the Senate. Eighty-five thousand votes out of 85 million? And if you take a look at the 15 contests that we lost, many of them — I mean, look, the closest contest, Rob Simmons, who ran in a district where the President got 38 percent of the vote. And yet he comes within 70-some-odd votes of winning.

And if you look at a lot of the other contests, they were contests like, you know, Foley’s district in Florida, in which in order to vote for the Republican nominee, who was a wonderful state representative, you had to punch the lever for Mark Foley. And we came within a matter of a couple of thousand votes of winning. And there were other contests there where the incumbent did not take the advice of his or her colleagues at the National Republican Congressional Committee or the Congressional Committee or the White House, and that was to get prepared for a tough race. You know, Hostettler in — well, he’s not one of the closest ones, but he took a seat that was — and Bush got two-thirds of the vote there, and he gets just over a third of the vote by raising no money, conducting no campaign and running one television ad that says, “I was proud to be one of the four or five Republicans to vote against the Iraq war resolution.”

So my point is, yes, I got the math wrong because it was a close call. And it was — maybe there were other smart people out there who were looking at the same data saying, you know what, all those races are going to tilt against Republicans — good for them.

MS. PERINO: Parting thoughts? Anymore parting thoughts?

MR. ROVE: Oh, no. No. I’ve had a fun time. I’ve had a real fun — and I’m going to miss my colleagues a lot.

 

 

 

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Karl Rove leaves Washington with mountainous political and strategic achievements, and yet empty-handed. His great dream of changing the political geography forever is unrealized. If most presidents come to Washington to govern within the framework of their political ideology, Rove hoped that his man would go way beyond that and permanently change the political landscape, ushering in a new era of lasting conservatism. Rove is a visionary and in the early days of the Bush ascendancy–something he engineered almost single-handedly–it appeared he might triumph.

Rove’s vision is as formidable as is his campaign execution; and his comprehension of electoral architecture is without peer. Rove believes that elections are won by an intimate understanding of not just states, but counties and precincts. He also believes a little sugar helps the medicine go down. That was the case when he discovered conservatism was viewed as harsh and unfeeling. Rove reached for the sugar and gave us “compassionate conservatism.” It was an idea both vague and transcendental: a bromide that could be swallowed by both the masses and the high priests. In the beginning, and the end, it was a hoax. But it was one that candidate George W. Bush could believe in, and it sped him on to the presidency.

Rove, an adoptive Texan, needed both shock troops and a Praetorian guard to advance his agenda. They were the Christian right and the graduates of the organization he had once run, College Republicans. The religious right was hand-fed by Rove, who spent enormous effort nurturing them and promising them Old Testament red meat. The new president would give them what they wanted, so much as he could: conservative judges, opposition to Roe v. Wade, limits on stem cell research, school prayer and school choice, and family friendly taxes. For their part, the conservative churches had to get out the vote and preach against the sinful liberals. The College Republicans Rove held close. He found jobs for them in the administration, the White House, and as lobbyists. Key figures like his old friend Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, were bolstered. They were encouraged to emphasize their links to Rove. The Christian right was the brawn and the College Republicans were the brains.

Rove’s Bush strategy did not produce a sweeping victory for Bush, but a messy conclusion in Florida. However, it was a victory for Rove. When Karl the Kingmaker was moved in to the White House by his friend, now grateful friend, George W. Bush, he arrived as the third most important person in the West Wing after the vice president. The chief of staff, Andrew Card, ranked Rove on paper. But Rove had the power, and he exercised it. He was the intellectual, the man with the charts and the power-point displays, and the quick historical references.

Before 9/11, Rove dabbled in foreign policy and even chaired a group on Iraq. But after the attacks another strain of the Republican activists, the so-called “neocons,” seized foreign policy and found a channel to Vice President Cheney. Rove, was now free to push the president’s agenda domestically. With one of his heroes in mind, William McKinley, Rove sought to bring about structural changes in policy that would turn America inexorably right. He failed.

Only two major pieces of the president’s domestic agenda were enacted in the first term: tax cuts and education reform. The faith-based initiative was watered down, Social Security reform was strangled at birth, immigration reform failed, and extending the tax cuts has not happened. Meanwhile the Republicans, especially conservatives, have lost faith in their White House team. Too many missteps; too many scandals or near scandals; and, hanging over everything, is Iraq.

In the end Rove, the political scientist and electoral engineer, failed in the politics of Capitol Hill. He is accused of being too dictatorial in dealing with members of his own party and too autodidactic with the opposition.

Rove, who admires Winston Churchill along with McKinley, missed Churchill’s respect for the House of Commons. Rove expected Republicans on the Hill to sign on to legislation because it furthered The Great Cause. Lawmakers did not like his style: Although they admired what he had achieved, they resented his lack of deference. Even Tom DeLay had screaming matches with Rove, by the former House speaker’s own report.

It has been a helluva ride, Karl.

Political pressure is mounting in Washington for a significant Iraq pullout by 2009. Under similar pressure, London withdrew from a much larger and older project in August 1947. Indeed, Ian Jack wrote in The Guardian, the British exited India “with a speed and directness that alarmed many Indians and with a purpose that stemmed in small part from America’s then anti-colonial pressure on a country that was broke and badly in America’s debt.”

 

While India is far from a perfect analogy with Iraq, in 1947 it offered some remarkably similar problems, Jack wrote. “Its politics had become lethally communalized–not Shia v Sunni, but Muslim v Hindu and Sikh. London attempted to preserve a one-nation India, but failed; by early 1947 there was still no form of Indian government to which power could be transferred. British troops in India, not counting British officers in the Indian Army, had dwindled from a prewar figure of 60,000 to no more than 12,000 two years after the second world war ended, and all of them were very anxious to come home. When Attlee’s Labor government took office in 1945, withdrawal from India was no longer a matter of if, but when.”

 

Discussions in the White House about setting a date to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq echo those on Downing Street in the mid-1940s. “In Downing Street on the last day of 1946, a cabinet meeting pondered the wisdom of announcing a precise date when, to quote from the record, ‘we had no assurance that there would by then be a representative authority to whom we could hand over power.’ Still, the cabinet felt that a precise date might knock a few heads together and that withdrawal could be dressed up so as not to ‘appear to be forced upon us by our weakness’ but instead the logical conclusion of policies pursued by successive British governments,” Jack wrote.

 

“The truth is that a blunt document written in September by Lord Wavell, the penultimate viceroy, had scared them. ‘In India one must either rule firmly or not at all,’ he wrote. ‘With a largely uneducated and excitable people, easily moved to violence, it is essential that agitation and incitement to unbridled riot should be stopped at once.’ Britain lacked the will and means for the long haul. Wavell said Britain needed to quit no later than spring 1948. In February 1947, the government earmarked June, and then appointed Wavell’s successor, Louis Mountbatten.”

 

Mountbatten set the partition of India into motion and similarly, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has proposed it for Iraq.

 

“Mountbatten was a military nincompoop and one of stupendous vanity, with a boyish preoccupation with flags, medals, uniforms and orders of ceremony. But in India he and his cleverer wife, Edwina, charmed people, particularly India’s most significant politician, Jawaharlal Nehru. For their day and class, they were remarkably free of racial condescension. A combination of charm, bluster, rashness and perhaps ignorance achieved a political settlement within months, though it meant the partition of India,” Jack wrote.

 

“By 1947, Indian politicians on all sides had begun to see the idea of Pakistan as inevitable, though neither Britain nor the U.S. was particularly in favor of it. What may not have been inevitable was the slaughter that accompanied Pakistan’s creation and for which Mountbatten’s haste is sometimes held to blame; according to the historian Andrew Roberts, he should have been courtmartialled when he got back to London. Somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million people died.”

 

But slowness may only have postponed and aggravated the carnage, Jack wrote. As with the Shiites and Sunnis in today’s Iraq, Hindu-Muslim killings were an everyday event in British India—in 1946, 4,000 died in the Calcutta riots.

 

“Mountbatten had few British troops to call on, and probably even fewer willing to risk their lives in the cause of communal harmony. And most politicians wanted the British out as soon as possible. Nehru had said, ‘I would rather have every village in India go up in flames than keep a single British soldier in India a moment longer than necessary,’ ” Jack wrote.

 

Murder and mayhem in Iraq would likely accompany a swift exit by the United States. But would U.S. troops be slaughtered on their way out, as some have suggested? Maybe not.”The indubitable benefit, from a strictly British point of view, is that very few British soldiers died between the declaration of India’s independence and the last troop ship home—seven officers in one statistic,” Jack wrote.

 

 

The residents of Happy Valley, aka The Wall Street Journal, are deeply gloomy that their new proprietor will almost certainly be Rupert Murdoch. There is irony here: The world’s best business newspaper is about to be acquired by the world’s most successful and imaginative publisher.

Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal will not have a column by Bill Kristol on Page One, nor will it have naked women on Page Three.

Murdoch’s real genius is that he knows his markets. He has also learned the hard way that newspapers in the U.S. are different than those in the U.K. or Australia. Based on past performance, he will move cautiously at The Journal, and will probably make few editorial changes. It is the management where his ax will most likely fall. Murdoch likes his managements lean and mean.

Why will he leave the news side of The Journal alone? The answer lies in Murdoch’s history. When he expanded into the U.K., Murdoch exploited the already salacious News of the World and took a middling tabloid, The Sun, to quite a difference place. Initially, The Sun had been the property of the British trade unions, and was bought by the Daily Mirror group. The group was sympathetic to the unions.

But The Mirror’s attitude to the working man was forged in the 1930s. It patronized the workers; saw them as horny-handed, exploited and ghettoized. But by the 1970s, when Murdoch made his move, the British worker owned a car and took his vacation in Spain.

Yes Murdoch vulgarized The Mirror, but he also appealed to the aspirations of the readers. He flipped the politics of the paper from left to right, and it took off to become the most successful of the British tabloids.

At The Times and The Sunday Times, Murdoch eradicated the sense of superiority, aiming the papers at the prosperous middle class, not at the hide-bound aristocracy and their set. Commercially, the results have been less dramatic than they were at The Sun. Nonetheless, Murdoch has saved two great newspapers, which were on their deathbeds when he came through the door.

Along the way, Murdoch tamed the unions, brought in new technology, and repudiated the blandishments of the British establishment. When he was denied a toehold in British television, Murdoch did a courageous and superb end-run. He bet his assets on establishing BSkyB, as satellite service that sold subscribers the dishes as well as the programs. It has been a success.

When Murdoch romped into the U.S., his British formulas did not work in American newspapers. Those he bought did not respond to his innovations. When he owned it, The Chicago Sun Times lost circulation. And he found no traction in Boston and San Antonio, Tex. The New York Post is not a commercial success; rather, it is Murdoch’s indulgence. He can afford it.

If Murdoch has failed as a newspaper proprietor in the U.S., he has succeeded mightily in television. The formula that worked in his British tabloids has worked even better in his American TV projects: conservatism with vulgarity. Particularly with Fox cable, Murdoch has been able to replicate what he achieved with the saucy Sun newspaper.

So why are they so worried at The Wall Street Journal? Could it be that the paper has become smug and self-satisfied, and fears change? Can it be that the staff would rather the paper die in a long, slow war of attrition than allow the world’s most innovative proprietor launch an offensive?

But there is one issue that The Journal should worry about: It is that Murdoch is 76 years old, and has a large and querulous family.