There's an old maxim that if Napoleon had been struck by a cannonball on his
way to Moscow, he would be remembered as an unrivaled military genius and
liberator. But Napoleon overstayed history's welcome and was treated harshly
for it, first by the Russians and Mother Nature, then by his own people and,
ultimately, by historians.
In this and other respects, Karl Rove strikes me as a Napoleonic figure. He
won an impressive string of campaigns. He dreamed of erecting a new
political order on the ashes of the old. He'd look awfully dashing in one of
those bicorn hats. Most of all, Rove - who announced he will retire Aug. 31
- stubbornly refused to depart the scene on a historic high note.
Now of course, the comparison has its limits. Rove is not a bloody-minded
invader or a dictator with scant regard for civil liberties - though you
might think otherwise if you get all of your news from left-wing blogs. Yet
he fits the picture, because if Rove had left the White House after George
Bush's re-election in 2004, he would have been a hero, a man remembered as
one of the great political tacticians of the last half-century.
Obviously, Rove was aided in his 2004 task by the fact that the Democrats
nominated John Kerry, a Michael Dukakis without the brains. But Rove and
then-Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman managed to help Bush
increase his support among blacks, women, Latinos, independents and
urbanites and defeat an opponent who got 8 million more votes than Al Gore.
Republicans held onto the House and Senate, too - a feat not equaled since
FDR's re-election in 1936. Coming on top of GOP gains in 2002, it was a
remarkable achievement.
And then winter came.
Bush traded his political capital for the magic beans of Social Security
reform, but the ground was too frozen for the seeds to take hold. Rove
deserves mixed praise for the effort. It was courageous, but, as Bush's
political brain, he should have seen that it was doomed to failure. As
Napoleon said, if you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.
Napoleon might also have said, if you set out to pacify Baghdad, pacify
Baghdad. Yet as the American public soured on the Iraq project, Bush's
political ear - i.e. the receiver of advice from Rove - transmogrified from
gold to tin. Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers, delaying the defenestration
of Don Rumsfeld until after the '06 election, immigration reform: These
moves made the Bush White House's grasp of the times seem increasingly
thumbless.
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