A review of Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush, by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon.
Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, by James Moore and Wayne Slater.
Following the Republicans' impressive victory in 2002, President Bush's political policy advisor, Karl Rove, basked in the political limelight. Mr. Rove was credited with designing the winning strategy, not only for 2002, but also for his boss's two victorious campaigns in Texas, and for the presidential win in 2000. A number of interviews and public appearances followed, and several books. The full titles of two of them speak for themselves: One, a fairly dispassionate and chatty narrative, is Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush. It is written by two Texans, Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, along with a veteran of the Washington press corps, Carl M. Cannon, the son of Lou Cannon. The other, longer and more acerbic, is Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, by television correspondent James Moore and Wayne Slater, the Austin bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.
Bush's Brain is neither useful nor particularly coherent. It lacks structure and clarity, in large measure because it never entertains the notion that Karl Rove has rational views of public policy and the public good. Mr. Rove is, for Slater and Moore, first, foremost, and last, the consummate party hack and consultant, an electoral junkie with no scruples and little interest in statesmanship. In consequence, the interface between political tactics and real policy aims never appears in their account. Instead, they wallow in breathless stories of personal grudges, fundraising techniques, investigations, and deal making. Governor Bush's education reforms in Texas are, according to Slater and Moore, all about money, teachers' unions and their electoral activities, and personal relations with prominent Texas politicos. Accountability, dropout rates, standards, phonics, bilingualismanything, in short, that actually affects students and teachersis absent from their account.
Boy Genius, by contrast, is thoughtful and lucid. Reid and Dubose, who wrote the first two-thirds of the book, provide an interesting, if brief, narrative of Rove's and Bush's growing interest in the social thinking of Myron Magnet and Marvin Olasky, and they at least mention Governor Bush's genuine indignation at poor kids' low levels of achievement in Texas public schools.
Their account of the bitter war between the Texas evangelicals and conservatives and establishment Republicans, led by Mr. Rove, is more informative than Slater's and Moore's version. The election of Tom Pauken as state party chief in the 1994 state convention handed Rove, who had run a more "moderate" candidate, a rare defeat. In Bush's Brain, we learn that Pauken supported Bob Dole over Bush's father in the 1988 presidential primary. This made Bush mad. We also read that Pauken's heading the 1996 Texas delegation to the national convention in place of Governor Bush was a snub. And we find out that a vengeful Rove dried up the state party's big money sources while supporting GOP candidates through a fund he controlled. But there isn't a word about what issues Pauken and the Bush/Rove forces actually differed on, until 1997. At that time, we learn, the two factions fought over tax increases proposed by Bush to replace the school funding that would vanish if, as the governor had proposed, the Texas property tax were sharply reduced. There were other facets to this complex financial reform package; politically, the bottom line was that Pauken attacked it in public as an un-Republican tax increase.
The unasked question, still relevant for conservatives today, is "what was the 1994 dispute about?" Why were Tom Pauken's social conservatives suspicious of the establishment, and what did Karl Rove fear about them, in turn? Slater and Moore seem utterly incurious about that question. I suspect it's because their politics and associates are so cynical that they haven't a clue, and don't care to look for one. Instead, they reduce politics to a story of personal animosity and power plays.
But even in Boy Genius, the story of the wars between Pauken and Rove is unsatisfactory. Reid and Dubose do note that the newly elected governor had "an air as a moderate," "shunned the Christian Right," and "disdained the immigrant-bashers in his party." They list some of the elements that Pauken's faction inserted in the 1994 Texas GOP Platform, mostly pro-life and anti-regulatory planks, and they note that George Bush "distanced himself" from the convention's work. And they leave it at that. Ultra-liberal Lou Dubose, the co-author, with Molly Ivins, of Shrub, a classic bit of Bush-bashing, may not have the contacts, or the interest, to find out more about an in-house conservative struggle.
At any rate, there was a massive and bitter fight over the school-to-work program, standards, and testing in the Texas public schools from 1995 up to and beyond the campaign of 2000, which pit social conservatives against Karl Rove's forces. Maybe Mr. Rove caught a whiff of danger from the passion that social conservatives felt over parental rights, home-schooling, abortion, and "gay rights." To win suburban swing voters, he calculated that the party's voice would have to be toned down and its image prettied up. Boy Genius does portray the 2000 national convention as aimed at precisely such cosmetic concerns. Cannon repeats a wonderful bit of grumping that John O'Sullivan put in the mouth of a GOP delegate: "Is this a Republican convention or the annual dinner of the Bilingual Friends of Feminism?" Now, in 2004, President Bush remains to the left of his party's base on bilingualism, illegal immigration, and affirmative action.
As one deeply involved in the affirmative action issue, I was pleased to see Boy Genius credit Democrat Attorney General Dan Morales with his politically brave stance following the decision in Hopwood v. Texas, when he ruled that the decision against race preferences extended to financial assistance in the University of Texas system. That ruling was later overturned by Rove's candidate and Morales's Republican successor, Texas attorney general and now United States Senator, John Cornyn. Reid and Dubose skillfully tell the story of how Rove stage-managed Cornyn's victory, humbled Morales (who has been since been disgraced by a criminal conviction over lawyers' fees in tobacco liability lawsuits), and beat, in the process, the other GOP candidate for Attorney General, Tom Pauken. The narration of these machinations is, for this reader, the most interesting and well-done portion of Boy Genius's account of events back in Texas.
Still, Boy Genius is not without its faults. In discussing Rove's well-known fascination with William McKinley and the presidential campaign of 1896, Reid and Dubose comically mention "the ballyhooed Texan political strategist Mark Hanna." Mark Hanna, a Texan? They misidentify the ardently Catholic Alan Keyes as an evangelical. In fact, they basically ignore Keyes and Steve Forbes, the two men who, after John McCain, caused the most trouble for Bush in the 1999-2000 primaries.
Nor does the book provide an account of Rove's role in what was, for pro-life Americans like me, the watershed policy decision on embryonic stem cell research. The authors declare that Mr. Rove has learned that he and the president must "appease the Christian Right," but leave unnoted just how, or whether, that was done in this case. My sources tell me that he took a stance in Mr.Bush's inner circle against any use of human remains for science. He wanted more than the president finally gave, so I am told; I hope they're right. I'd have liked a confirmation from Boy Genius. But it's not there.
Boy Genius ends with a double epilogue, one from Washington, written by Cannon, and one from Austin, written by Reid and Dubose. Both sensibly note that it is a bit early to pass judgment on George W. Bush's master political technician. He may eventually be credited with a principal role in helping Bush be elected twice each governor of Texas and President of the United States; perhaps even with enabling the president to create an enduring Republican electoral hegemony. But those advances may come at a high pricethe general retreat from conservative positions on immigration, race preferences, federalism in education, and bilingualism.