Rove the strategist

Opinion Journal:

One of our biggest arguments with Karl Rove was over the Bush Administration's first-term steel tariffs. We opposed them, and in one editorial calling for their repeal we scored "Secretary of State Rove" for letting politics trump U.S. interests. Mr. Rove never gave any quarter, and when trade promotion authority passed Congress in 2002 by 215-212, he tracked us down to read a list of Members who had voted aye: They all belonged to the Steel Caucus.

The episode captures the essential Rove--the political strategist whose larger purpose was always to advance President Bush's policy goals. In this case, he judged that Congress would never give Mr. Bush free-trade expansion power without evidence first of tough trade enforcement. We think Congress would have done so anyway, and that the steel tariffs and 2002 farm bill hurt America's trade leadership in the world. But right or wrong, Mr. Rove has always been as much policy wonk as political operative, and always loyal to the President's agenda.

This truth is hard for many partisans to accept on both the left and right, as yesterday's reaction to Mr. Rove's resignation announcement shows. Democrats either rejoiced that the evil "Bush's Brain" is gone, or blamed him as Barack Obama did as "an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided." The former is a way of diminishing Mr. Bush, while the latter is highly selective history.

Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign strategy was explicitly to be "a uniter, not a divider." The contested election outcome made the Bush Presidency polarizing from the start, however, and some Democrats have never considered him legitimate. The debate over Iraq and Mr. Bush's response to the war on terror has compounded the rancor. Mr. Rove is hardly any more "divisive" than any other political strategist; has everyone forgotten James Carville or Harold Ickes? The difference is that Mr. Rove's remarkable run of success--first in Texas, then nationwide from 2000-2004--has caused many on the political left to assume he must be cheating. Otherwise, how could anyone vote for these Texas yahoos?

The events of September 11 and Iraq have made this predominantly a war Presidency, and that fact has also colored Mr. Rove's record for better or worse. For the better, it provided the political capital to retake the Senate in 2002, pass the Bush tax cuts that spurred the economy, and frame the Bush Doctrine. Mr. Rove was especially vital to the first two. And as he argues, much of that policy toward terrorism is likely to be adopted by future Presidents of either party. With his recent "invade Pakistan" riff, Mr. Obama has himself signed on to the view that countries should not be allowed to harbor terrorists.

For the worse, the trouble in Iraq sapped Mr. Bush's public support early in his second term and diminished his ability to pass major domestic reform. Social Security was the most notable casualty, followed this year by the collapse of immigration reform. Republicans suffered major Congressional losses last year, though in this Messrs. Bush and Rove aren't much different than Eisenhower in 1958, LBJ in 1966, or Reagan in 1986. Our own sense is that the biggest GOP liability last year was corruption in Congress, not Iraq.

...

One of the current big lies of Democrats is that the 2006 election was a mandate for defeat in Iraq when in fact they were running away from the cut and run label during the entire campaign. Who pinned that label on them? Why Karl Rove did in a speech before the election that defined his opponents and made them squirm. That is what they hate about him. He was able to frame the debate in a way that made them uncomfortable with their prejudices. It was his ability to frame issues that angered them the most because it showed them as the party trying to divide America.