Bush gives Rove expansive title
WASHINGTON – During President Bush’s first term, outsiders often suspected that Karl Rove was really behind virtually everything. Now it’s official.
Tuesday, Rove, the political mastermind behind two presidential elections, was named White House deputy chief of staff in charge of coordinating domestic policy, economic policy, national security and homeland security.
For a man who spent a lifetime in the business of polls and campaign strategy, it is an expansive portfolio cutting across virtually the entire policy spectrum. But many in the White House said the new position largely formalizes what was already true, noting that Rove has quietly played a vital role in shaping domestic policy from the inception of the Bush presidency. Now, for the first time, he will have a formal hand in foreign policy as well.
The shifting responsibilities reflected a broader retrofit of the White House that Bush largely completed Tuesday as he retooled his staff to focus on his ambitious second-term agenda of restructuring Social Security, rewriting the tax code and spreading democracy around the world. With no more elections in his future, Bush moved his key strategist into a new more simplified chain of command focused on legislative markups rather than Electoral College math, while also shuffling other top jobs in the West Wing.
The move arose out of discontent by Bush and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card with what they considered a vacuum in the policy staff after the 2003 departure of Joshua Bolten to the Office of Management and Budget, a White House adviser said. “Since Josh Bolten went to OMB, the policy process has been a little bit loose and hasn’t had the kind of discipline it used to,” the adviser said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Karl can do that.”
Democrats saw the appointment as confirmation of their long-standing theory that Rove serves as the behind-the-scenes Svengali driving government decisions for political considerations. The Democratic National Committee issued a list of episodes and accusations intended to illustrate what it called “Roveian dirty tricks and skullduggery.”
“Empowering Rove in this way shows that Bush cares more about political positioning than honest policy discussions,” DNC Chairman Terence McAuliffe said in a statement. “Bush knows that Rove is neither an economic nor a national security expert; he’s simply an ideological strategist who has a history of bending the truth and using dirty tricks to get his way.”
White House officials emphasized the Rove will coordinate rather than manage the various policy councils and noted that responsibilty for intelligence and defense matters would be shifted to the other deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin.