Courage and Consequence

But “ ‘Rovian’ campaign theories were about to be tested on a big state with consequences few could anticipate,” Rove writes with uncharacteristic understatement. Bush, pitched as an education candidate, trounced flamboyant Democrat Ann Richards to win the Texas governship in 1994. After Bush won reelection in 1998, Bush set his eyes – or, rather, Rove set Bush’s eyes – on the White House. “I was the one brash enough to bring it up,” Rove says of the genesis of a second Bush in the White House. His enthusiasm is unsurprising; Rove’s support of Bush is personal before professional, and often evangelical. “I went from being a longtime friend to being a political partner,” he writes. When Bush, unable to believe he’s won Bush v. Gore, hangs up on Rove when he calls with the news, Rove emotes: “I was standing in my pajamas, looking out a hotel window into a dark, deserted office park, having been hung up on by the man who would now be president.”

The remainder of “Courage and Consequences” presents a rose-colored version of that presidency. Though Rove admits Bush isn’t a great debater, Rove’s president is rarely wrong; when he is, it’s Rove’s fault. Rove takes the fall for Bush’s failed Social Security reform (“I was ... banking too much on a newly reelected president’s ability to move Congress”), Harriet Miers’s failed Supreme Court bid (“My antennae should have been sharper”), and the administration’s slow response to Katrina (“I’m one of the people responsible for this mistake”). Rove does his best to bust the myth that he’s a right-wing Svengali by denying that he smeared John McCain during the 2000 primary, swiftboated John Kerry, or leaked Valerie Plame’s name during the Joe Wilson episode, in which he narrowly escaped indictment.

But there’s also plenty for Bush/Rove to be right about, including the Iraq war and the 2007 troop surge. On the war on terror, Rove’s prose glows. “Did America have the resolve to win this new and dangerous conflict?” Rove asks. “Yes, America did – because its president did.”

Still, the man Bush called “Boy Genius” remains shrouded. Why did Rove’s two marriages end in divorce? How does he feel about Toby Jones’s portrayal of him as a fawning weirdo in Oliver Stone’s “W.?” And why didn’t he ever run for public office himself? One reads “Courage and Consequence” waiting for an Oz moment, when the curtain is pulled back to reveal the man behind the curtain. Here, there’s just more curtain.

Justin Moyer is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

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