WASHINGTON – Not to be “ungenerous or self-centered,” White House communications director Ed Gillespie said Tuesday that he thought some people overestimated Karl Rove’s importance.
After all, Gillespie pointed out, in the 2004 presidential campaign he himself headed the Republican National Committee, the heart of the party’s operations. He talked to Rove, he said, only “from time to time.”
Another White House official, asked what it would mean to lose the legendary strategist whose departure was announced Monday, recalled that Rove started the staff’s “ice cream Fridays.”
As one of the most powerful and controversial presidential advisers in modern history heads for the exit at the end of the month, the White House is engaged in an unusual game of double spin: While President Bush bear-hugged Rove and showered him with praise in a South Lawn ceremony, officials such as Gillespie quietly began to whittle down Rove’s image as the man who played a key role in almost every major decision of this Bush administration.
Downsizing Rove puts some distance between Bush and a man who has become a lightning rod for Democratic attacks.
Reducing Rove’s stature as he leaves could help the administration in the same way that Donald Rumsfeld’s departure as secretary of defense last year temporarily eased pressure on the president’s Iraq war policy.
Even Rove has joined the game. Monday, the day his resignation was formally announced, he ridiculed journalists who dubbed him “Bush’s brain” and said they built him up to “diminish” the president’s abilities.
But in the same discussion with reporters aboard Air Force One, Rove boasted that his office was just 15 steps away from the Oval Office.
And in discussing the multifaceted struggle between the Democratic Congress and the Bush White House, Rove said he was Moby Dick [—] the mythic white whale at the center of Herman Melville’s epic novel [—] “and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab.”
A posse of Democratic congressional investigators has been pushing hard for evidence that Rove went too far in politicizing the federal government, including the possibility that he improperly injected politics into the decision to fire several U.S. attorneys. The administration’s own Office of Special Counsel also is investigating Rove’s activities.
Those inquiries may lose some of their steam with Rove out of government.
“If the person you’ve been focusing on now leaves and goes to Texas, what do you do? That’s the question facing Democrats at this point,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who has advised Capitol Hill Republicans.
The effort to acknowledge Rove’s influence while also downplaying it was evident in other senior officials’ comments. They acknowledged his strengths as a political strategist while insisting he was replaceable and not the dominant presence often portrayed.
Andrew Card, former White House chief of staff, said in separate television appearances that the “myth” of Rove often overshadowed the reality.
Perino said, “If he actually did all the things he was accused of doing, he’d be 20 people and never sleep, maybe 200 people.”
Yet Rove long has been viewed as more than a typical presidential aide [—] a rare combination of political strategist, presidential confidant, policymaker and chief contact for conservative activists. Bush has described him as “the architect,” and Rove has proved to be a major draw for Republican candidates on the fundraising and campaign circuit.
“He controlled a great deal of the real estate, and no matter how the White House spins his departure, the truth is that he leaves a gaping hole inside the White House,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who has forged a friendship with Rove despite years of combat.
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