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        Copyright 2005 The Conde Nast Publications Inc.All Rights ReservedVanity FairJuly 2005SECTION: MICHAEL WOLFF; The Power Of Rove; No. 539; Pg. 60LENGTH: 3228 wordsHEADLINE: The Power Of Rove;For spooked and frustrated liberals, Karl Rove embodies everything evil inAmerican politics. How has Bush's top strategist managed to outmaneuver andelude them at every turn? Perhaps because he isn't interested in anything butpolitics: the old-fashioned, down-and-dirty, unglamorous, winning kindBYLINE: Michael Wolff, Contributing EditorHIGHLIGHT:Michael Wolff Plugs Into Bush's Brain p. 60BODY:   What do liberals mean when they say "Karl Rove"?   Al Gore was out at the Michael Milken-sponsored bigwig conference in LosAngeles (the Milken Institute Global Conference) not long ago, giving Rovesingular credit for his defeat. John Kerry, likewise, can't stop "murmuring 'Rove, Rove' under his breath," says one senior political operative of myacquaintance.   A recent PBS Frontline documentary on Rove was titled The Architect, afterthe president's election night acknowledgment of Rove (and thanks to "thearchitect, Karl Rove"). But whereas Bush's architect, we might assume, isdraftsman, planner, and hired hand (who doesn't think this is how Bush sees anarchitect?), in Frontline's liberal construct, architect Rove is strictly out ofAyn Rand-an all-powerful creator, designer, mastermind, and, if he chooses, orif his mind wanders, destroyer.   In the liberal lexicon, Karl Rove, the great direct-mail specialist, hasbecome a direct- mail hot word himself-you get a solicitation with the menacingword "Rove" and you get out your checkbook. No one since, perhaps, Joe McCarthyhas suggested the dark forces in American politics, and the impotence ofliberals, more than Rove.   He's a curse. A terrifying specter. Something alive in the night.   Among his purported signature escapades is the one that, characteristically,nobody can connect him to: artfully, if illegally, leaking to columnist RobertNovak the name of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame, whose husband, former ambassadorJoseph Wilson, had annoyed the administration by disputing one of its W.M.D.whoppers (and who evoked the wishful image of Karl Rove being "frog-marched outof the White House in handcuffs"). Rove is always at a remove. Disembodied.Hence, "Rovian"-the appellation given to swift, seamless, destabilizingpolitical acts which liberals, helplessly, can't seem to pin on anyone.   Most political figures grow smaller with scrutiny. Rove, resistingdefinition-I know of no satisfying character description of the man-grows everlarger. Who is he? Karen Hughes, the other dominant personality in the WhiteHouse before she returned to Austin, is emblematic of the Bush style in herplainness, her what-you-see-is-what-you-get-ness, her meat-and-potato-ness. ButRove ... ?   At a recent interview with a deeply self-satisfied Rove before a Time Warnercocktail reception (Rove left before the cocktails), Norman Pearlstine, theinterlocutor and Time Inc. editor in chief, tried to discreetly work the key inthe lock. Pearlstine-who pointed out that Rove was the runner-up for Time's 2004Person of the Year, behind only Bush himself-gently tried to needle Rove abouthis Jaguar. Was this a whiff of glamour, perhaps even a hint of foreignness,emanating from the anti-latte-sipping Rove? Rove neatly pointed out that Jaguaris owned by the Ford Motor Company. Pearlstine pursued, asking if Rove'sstepfather (a complicated issue here-Rove was a teenager before he found out hisstepfather was not his biological father), a geologist, would by necessity havebelieved in evolution-a significant deviation for Rove's fabled conservativebase. Rove allowed, smoothly, that, while they'd never discussed it, this mightbe true, but that his stepfather was a man of faith, though, Rove added, prettysmoothly, too-cat-that-ate-the-canary smooth-"not of deep faith." With evengreater catlike-ness, this mastermind of evangelical politics offered, "I'm anEpiscopalian, so I'm not allowed to have deep religious beliefs."   You can't catch him.   He's the liberal conundrum. "Nobody knows how to elect a president," says thepolitical consultant Howard Wolfson, who, if things go right, will be HillaryClinton's Rove a few years hence. But what if Rove has figured it out? And whatif what you have to do is the exact opposite of the way a liberal would do it?He's the political other. The spore that got loose. The moon face. Theporcineness. Those horn-rims. He's Simon Birch. Or he should be-certainly inliberal hands he would be-a comic or satirical character. (His biographers, CarlM. Gannon, Lou Dubose, and Jan Reid, point out in their 2003 book, Boy Genius,that in college the Commie-hating Rove worked behind the cash register in whatsounds suspiciously like a head shop-now, that's funny.) Except that he clearlyis not a joke-so if there is a joke, it must be on us.   It's ... Nixon. He's back. Indeed, more than Reagan, the perennialsentimental Republican favorite, Nixon is Rove's great hero.   Rove grows up in Utah. His parents break up. He finds out his father is nothis father. His mother commits suicide. But such personal history figuresnowhere in the Rove affect (politicians may have to get sappy and confessional,but not Rove).   Maybe most notably, he's not a Mormon in Utah. He's got no religion in anorthodox world-how unsettling is that? Perhaps looking for his sect (or,possibly, he's striking a secular blow), he becomes an obsessive teenageRepublican. He drops out of college and heads to Washington during the height ofthe Watergate investigation to pursue his young-Republicanism.   He's Briefcase Bob. Not just a nerd but an aggressive nerd-a mean nerd. Fortyyears later people still have hurt feelings over Rove's moves and countermovesin the organizational power struggles among the young Republicans.   The reward for his obsessiveness is that he gets to run errands for olderRepublicans (there's a GoodFellas sense at this point in the Rove story-hishanging around, driving the boss's car, getting to perform a few small-timedirty tricks). The big guy he's working for, a wealthy former Texas congressman,tells him to deliver car keys to his son who's down from Harvard B-school. Thisis Rove's road-to-Damascus moment, similar to Clinton's shaking hands withJ.F.K.-similarly transforming, similarly erotic. Says Rove about his firstglimpse of the 27-year-old George W. Bush, "I can literally remember what he waswearing: an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, blue jeans... He wasexuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have." Or, inanother telling: "huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flightjacket, wonderful smile, just charisma-you know, wow." Rove even remembers thecar: "A purple Gremlin with Levi interior." A testament, he always takes theopportunity to point out, to Bush-family frugality.   In every variant of the Rove early-years tale, he comes off as Sammy Glick,hustling, sucking, dealing. In the middle of Watergate, The Washington Post evenwrites a story (the Post has been dropped a tape by one of Rove'syoung-Republican antagonists) about Rove's giving a tactical seminar on dirtytricks. (In one instance, Rove passed out free-food-and-drink invitations to thelocal homeless for an opponent's campaign event.) He's this close to being nowforgotten Watergate dirty-trickster Donald Segretti instead of Karl Rove.   And yet, there's another way to tell the Rove story: while the better bredare turning up their noses at politics-in some sense re-evaluating the veryconventions of the form, trying to upgrade the whole craft, or departing indroves for tonier professions (George Bush getting his M.B.A.)-Rove is learningclassic technique. In the post-Watergate clean-hands world, in the age of theever expanding economy, where the real operators are heading, Rove is ashoeshine-and-a-smile, steal-it-if-you-must, winning-is-everything politicalapprentice.The striking comparison here, the parallel reality, is with the career of Rove'sopposite number on the Gore and Kerry campaigns, Bob Shrum.   In 1976, Shrum, the 32-year-old Harvard Law graduate, is making a principledstand and quitting the Carter presidential campaign over some liberal slightthat is almost impossible to decipher now. Shrum thereafter assumes celebrityrank in liberal politics, working in every Democratic presidential campaign fromCarter on.   In 1977 the 26-year-old Rove heads for Texas, walking into possibly the leasthospitable environment for a Republican in the nation: the Democrats hold everystatewide post but one and have held the governor's office for more than 100years.   Shrum, in Washington, becomes a virtuoso of high-profile speeches and high-margin television political ads (earning a percentage on all media bought andamassing quite a serious fortune in the process). Rove, in Austin, starts abusiness focused on low-margin direct mail.   Television political advertising is the glamour deal. Direct mail is junkmail, not a profession that anyone aspires to (at least not until it starts tobe called database marketing). But the vectors of influence and usefulness areabout to change. Shrum's 30-second and 60-second television spots will betransformed from glitzy and powerful to expensive and, often, unproductive.Whereas Rove's direct mail makes money-a successful mailing delivers a messageand returns more money than the message cost to deliver. What's more, as Rovehas pointed out, mail is largely "immune from press coverage"-you can sayanything about anybody and you won't get caught; it's invisible media.   In Washington, through the 80s and 90s, Shrum builds one of the most eminentclient lists in politics-anybody who's anybody hires Shrum. Rove, in DemocraticTexas, slowly builds a different sort of list-a database of Republican donors,voters, potential voters (Rove is an early computer geek too-all spreadsheetsand merge/ purge). He controls pretty much the only Republican list in Texas. He's the guy you have to go to if you're a Republican candidate. Actually, don'tcall him. He selects the candidates-he creates them. Most of all, Bushhimself-whom Rove works from the ground up.   Shrum's world is a civilized, businesslike mix of winning and losing and,too, personal publicity-your candidate can lose, but, with the right press, youcan win.   In Rove's world, there's only winning. And you avoid publicity. (A friend ofmine who ran a leading technology company in Austin through the 90s says henever heard of Rove-who, operating from Austin, is now understood to have beenthe most powerful political figure in Texas-until Bush started running forpresident.) A combination of legend and fact has Rove in cahoots with an F.B.I.agent named Greg Rampton, who investigates various Democrats standing in Rove'sway-several of whom end up in jail. In a gubernatorial race, legend and facthave Rove bugging his own office and pinning it on the opposition. Legend andfact have him ever-so-stealthily, ever deniably, attaching the lesbian questionto Bush's first gubernatorial opponent, the much-liked Ann Richards. These areskill sets that Shrum would not have acquired.   In their parallel realities, Shrum becomes one of the biggestinside-the-beltway stars and Democratic bloviators, while Rove systematically,race by race, re-district by re-district, institutionalizes the Republican Partyin Texas and destroys the Democratic Party. They are both beyond being mereconsultants. But whereas Shrum is a media personality, a talking head, Rove is,in essence, the political boss of the nation's second-largest state, a Hague, aPendergast, a Daley.A confounding thing for liberals is that a guy with such a nuts-and-bolts,regional, old-fashioned, political-muscle career (who would even want such acareer?) turns out to be good at media. Image has been a Democratic thing: theKennedys and Clinton. O.K., Reagan, sure ... an actor-but Texas? The Bushes?   It isn't just that Rove, the direct-mail guy, has a much more practiced andintuitive feel for slicing and dicing, for targeting, for micro-targeting-forseeing a national election as 50 separate races in 50 states-than an