|
George W. Bush couldn’t have become President without the genius
of Karl Rove, the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain and the man who has become
known as “Bush’s Brain”.
There would be no War with Iraq without Karl Rove --- because he sold
us images of “mushroom clouds over America”, “weapons
of mass destruction” and the critical importance of a “War
President”.
There would be no Patriot Act without Karl Rove because he convinced America
that dissent was the same as disloyalty. He persuaded America that to speak
out and question your country meant that you weren’t a patriot, that
you didn’t love your country.
Karl Rove was the dark Da Vinci of American politics. He was a master
at creating the wedge issue: whether it be gay marriage or national security
or patriotism. If he could convince you that the other side was “un-American,
he could always come out on top. Karl Rove was a virtuoso when it came
to dividing America to elect his candidate.
Whether it was John McCain being “rumored” to have fathered
a daughter with an African American prostitute or accusing Georgia Senator
Max Cleland, a Vietnam and veteran and amputee, of being soft on terrorism,
Karl Rove was a master at “smash-mouth” junkyard dog politics.
BUSH’S BRAIN is a Karl Rove primer. It tells the Rove story from
the very beginning— from the time when he was a suit-and-tie-wearing
high school nerd orchestrating hardball debates and political campaigns
to when he came national leader of the “College Republicans”.
It chronicles the life of Karl Rove during the Nixon years, when he learned “dirty
tricks” from some of the masters of the craft and then quickly put
them to work as a young political operative in Texas campaigns of the late
eighties and early nineties – setting up a phony bug in his office
and notorious witch hunt of political opponents, sending two men to jail
in the process.
Finally, BUSH’S BRAIN takes you on a guided tour of Karl Rove’s
undisputed masterpiece of political artistry: the elections of George W.
Bush. It shows how he shaped, sculpted and packaged a virtual political
novice, tranforming him into the President of the United States in less
than a decade.
Through interviews with close friends, former opponents, campaign operatives,
politicians, journalists, and political pundits, BUSH’S BRAIN tells
the story of how Karl Rove pulled off an American political miracle. It
shows how he tutored an unpolished Texas oil man, a son of privilege who
never had shown much of a penchant for politics or anything else, a man
who had made one ill-advised run for Congress and then hung it up for good.
From his masterful political skills to the secret machinations he carefully
orchestrated, Karl Rove has been a new calibration in the idea of a “political
advisor”. BUSH’S BRAIN makes an explosive case that Karl Rove
was one of the most powerful non-elected official in American history and
the first “co-president” of the United States.
|
