Karl Rove Resigns Key Role

Debra Sellers, August 14, 2007

Monday Karl Rove, the longest-serving and closest White House aide, announced that he would resign as a deputy White House chief of staff at the end of the month.

"Karl Rove is moving on down the road," Bush said as the two appeared together for an emotional close to this chapter of their 14-year political partnership. A few moments later, he turned to Rove and added: "I'll be on the road behind you here in a little bit."

Rove, the primary author of President Bush's two national campaigns and perhaps the most influential and controversial presidential strategist of his generation, became the latest Bush adviser and one of the last of the senior Texas team members to head back to Texas.

Rove known as "Bush's brain" by critics and "the architect" by Bush himself, became famous for a brand of attack politics that emphasized turning out his party's conservative base and painting Democrats as weak on national security. He hoped to realign national politics with far-reaching plans to steer taxpayer money to faith-based groups, rewrite immigration laws, and redefine government to favor more market-based approaches in Social Security and taxes .

Rove follows other top aides in departing since the midterm elections, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton, White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, presidential counselor Dan Bartlett, deputy national security advisers J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, and budget director Rob Portman.

"Karl Rove was an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided, the special interests more powerful and the American people more shut out from their government than any time in memory," said Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) was more succinct:
"Goodbye, good riddance."

Senator John Kerry, (Mass.), who said Mr. Rove had “proved the politics of division may win some elections but cannot govern America.”

Rove leaves a legacy of a Supreme Court tilting significantly rightward, an expensive and flawed Medicare prescription drug plan; a failed immigration policy, they hoped would appeal to the growing Hispanic population whom he sees as crucial to the party’s growth.

He leaves behind a disheveled view of the US in the international arena with advice to shape the administration's case to go to war in Iraq, and was a key player in the leak of Valerie Plame's identification as a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction. Wilson, Plame's husband, charged that "the move was an attempt at intimidation by the Bush administration in retaliation for his criticism".

Rove leaves as a string of Congressional committee investigations into his involvement in the firings of U.S. attorneys last year as well as the series of political briefings conducted at government agencies and the use of Republican National Committee email accounts by White House officials.

Read more at NY Times, Aug. 13, 2007

Read more at CNN

Read more at Washington Post , Aug. 14, 2007