Karl Rove

Tomorrow night marks the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. Members of the press corps (including some Media Mob contributors who are already on their way—note low posting rate today!) will have a chance to clink glasses with the president and his cabinet and remind themselves that despite five years of war, an economy some are already calling a Depression, and a painful slog of an election season, it's all in good fun. L'chaim! To us!

This year's event will be emceed by CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, whom the W.H.C.A.'s president (and ABC News correspondent), Ann Compton, is really excited about: "Craig Ferguson is a fresh take on late night TV. As a new citizen, a first-time uncommitted voter and someone who has looked at American politics from the outside, I am looking forward to his unique take on our system."

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Tuesday, March 4, around 8 p.m., Bill O’Reilly bounded across a chilly studio on the first floor of the News Corp. building on Sixth Avenue toward the desk at the back of the room.

There, the members of the Fox News Super Tuesday II political team—Brit Hume, Juan Williams, Bill Kristol, Nina Easton and Fred Barnes—were wrapping up another back-and-forth session, chewing over the night’s early returns. Mr. Kristol made an observation about the rationality of voters. A producer announced a break.  read more »

The terms of Karl Rove's contract with Newsweek: It's a 2-year-deal, 8 columns per year and 16 overall.

A Newsweek spokeswoman confirmed this to Media Mob; editor Jon Meacham had let it slip out on Feb. 7, when a Columbia J-school student asked him about Mr. Rove (and right before Mr. Meacham asked an entire lecture-room full of Columbia students why they didn't like Newsweek).

Time magazine lifer Priscilla Painton, who was named editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster's flagship imprint yesterday, will edit Karl Rove's forthcoming memoirs, according to The Politico.

Ms. Painton, who was deputy managing editor of Time until she quit this past October in search of a "second act," has known Mr. Rove for many years, according to The Politico, and calls him a "natural storyteller." What's more, "they already like each other," which is perhaps why Ms. Painton is getting involved with the book even though it's being published by a different imprint of Simon & Schuster than the one she'll be working for.  read more »

After weeks of speculation, it's finally official: Karl Rove's memoirs will be published by Threshold Editions, the conservative-minded imprint of Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books overseen by GOP strategist Mary Matalin.

Earlier this week, Mr. Rove and his representative in the deal, DC lawyer Robert Barnett, were deciding between Threshold and Free Press, another imprint of Simon & Schuster.

In the press release announcing the deal, Mr. Rove is quoted as saying, "I look forward to writing about my role in George W. Bush's campaigns and in his consequential and contentious Presidency. The book will be a candid, careful look at how he got there and what his Administration did once in office. It will tackle and shed light on important events and big controversies, spell out their implications for America and set the record straight."

Naturally, the announcement made no mention of how much Threshold is paying Mr. Rove for the book, but you can be sure there will be plenty of guessing in the next few days.

Karl Rove, with his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed, becomes one of the countless political observers to bemoan the excessively lengthy presidential campaign process. He (and everyone else before him) clearly has a point. But he also invokes some familiar and misleading history to make his case ...  read more »

The reason Karl Rove's memoirs do not have a publisher a full week after the auction ended last Wednesday is that Mr. Rove and his representative, DC lawyer Robert Barnett, want to meet with the editors who are pursuing the book and are running into scheduling difficulties because of the holidays, according to a publishing source who would not speak for attribution.

Mr. Rove wants to ask questions about their intentions regarding promotion, timing, editing, etc.--questions he has already asked in prior meetings, but is revisiting now that he's faced with a decision.

Because the holiday season is so busy, the source said, meetings have been hard to arrange.

As previously reported, Mr. Rove is considering two imprints, both of which are part of Simon & Schuster: Threshold Editions, a conservative shop run by GOP strategist Mary Matalin, and Free Press, which used to be aggressively conservative but has since refashioned itself as a general interest operation.

Reached for comment this morning, Mr. Barnett said, "Mr. Rove is taking the time to make an informed decision."  read more »

Karl Rove's memoir, whose rights will be auctioned beginning today, should fetch around $3 million, according to an unnamed publisher who plans to bid on it and spoke to The New York Post's Keith Kelly.

That would be significantly less than memoirs by Tony Blair, Teddy Kennedy, and both Bill and Hillary Clinton, all of whom were represented, like Mr. Rove, by Washington uber-lawyer/agent Bob Barnett.

The publisher says Mr. Rove is "moving beyond the cliches," though there was little evidence of that in Mr. Rove's first column for Newsweek.

“I get these deals because of the client and the book, not because of me. I may facilitate putting the client with the right publishing house and the right editor, I may conduct a negotiation which results in the client getting the best deal available … but ultimately it’s the client and the book that gets the deal, not me.  read more »

That didn't take long.  Karl Rove's first column for Newsweek, titled "How to Beat Hillary (Next) November" (by the way, why the parentheses around "next"?) is now available.   The advice doesn't get too much more specific than "be bold in approach and presentation," but this seems to be one of those hires where the actual content of the writing matters less than the byline.  read more »

Karl Rove is in New York today shopping a book proposal to editors, according to two publishing sources, including one executive who is meeting with Mr. Rove during his visit. According to the sources, President Bush's former political guru is being represented by Washington D.C. lawyer Robert Barnett, who has previously brokered huge book deals for political figures like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, and Alan Greenspan.  read more »

Newsweek has hired Karl Rove as a contributor for the 2008 election. On Tuesday, the magazine announced that it had hired Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog The Daily Kos, in a similar role.

Newsweek press release after the jump...  read more »

Yesterday, Alpha Media Group--the name for the investors backed by Quadrangle Capital Partners who bought Maxim, Blender and Stuff from Dennis Publishing yesterday for more than $240 million--announced plans to fold Stuff, the shopping-centered T&A men's magazine, and resurrect it as a regular section in its lad mag, Maxim.

Maxim and Blender will be the chief beneficiaries of the new owners' money and time from now on, with plans to increase the rate-base for Blender, the music and lifestyle magazine, to 1 million by January 2009.

Maxim will get "Stuff for Men" as a section of the magazine, now that the title no longer has to compete with FHM magazine, the other lad-shopping mag.

Click "Read More" for more of today's media headlines.  read more »

The Observer reported yesterday on editorial page editor Paul Gigot's scoop about Karl Rove’s resignation, buried on page A15.

Since The Journal did not run a reported story at the time, there is a piece today out of the Washington D.C. bureau, co-written by John D. McKinnon and Jackie Calmes. (Oddly, it doesn't jump off Page 1).

When reached by phone, Ms. Calme said that she was given no forewarning from Journal higher-ups about the contents of Mr. Gigot’s interview, and discovered the news the same time as the competition—in the early morning hours on August 13. Of course, Mr. Rove spread the news to Mr. Gigot two days earlier.

So did Mr. Rove give the scoop to The Journal’s editorial page with an embargo not to leak it to the other side of the editorial/ news divide?

Managing editor Marcus Brauchli has not returned emails or calls seeking comment. Mr. Gigot has declined to comment.

But Peter Baker, the Washington Post’s White House correspondent, expressed his theory in an online Q&A. (Thanks FishbowlDC).

“Rove obviously crafted his own departure strategy, starting with a mostly sympathetic ear in Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor of the Journal,” Mr. Baker wrote. “Gigot got the scoop and wrote a piece that let Rove largely frame his decision on his terms. It's a little unusual to do it that way, but I suppose not entirely surprising. It certainly made for an early morning since the Journal email came out around 4:45 a.m."

Quite early for the Journal’s own reporters, too.

Why Karl Rove is leaving matters much less than the opportunities he squandered and the wreckage he leaves behind.  read more »

It’s true that August is a bad time for a product launch, as Andy Card famously said of the American invasion of Iraq.  read more »

On Monday morning, Karl Rove stood next to President George W. Bush on the South Lawn of the White House and announced that he would be resigning from the administration at the end of the month. In front of the assembled D.C. press corp, he read a statement, and the President spoke. There was no formal opportunity for questions.

Towards the end of the appearance, as the President and his favorite pol were about to head in the direction of an awaiting helicopter, Bill Plante, CBS White House correspondent, broke the embargo.

“If he’s so smart,” said Mr. Plante, “how come you lost Congress?”  read more »

Here is Chad Shepard, a 23-year-old Maryland resident who was sightseeing in DC today with some friends, and who was pleased with the news of Karl Rove's imminent departure.

"I'm happy," he said. "I was waiting for this day. His ideas did not benefit most citizens. It seems like everyday somebody is resigning."

Referring to the trio of Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and George W. Bush, he said, "We just need one more to go."

While Democrats take turns hammering Karl Rove today, former Rove associates are paying their respects to a man they invariably refer to as a genius.

Mark Corallo, who was Rove's spokesman for two years during the Fitzgerald investigation, and who is now a senior advisor to Fred Thompson, said that Rove is instantly the most sought-after campaign talent for the potential Republican nominees.

Whether he is available is another story.

"He's by far the best asset out there," said Corallo. "I don't know that he wants to do any of that, though. My guess is that it is 'been there, done that' for him."

Corallo also guessed that the Republican campaigns aren't going to be bombarding Rove with direct requests for help.

"Everybody is going to give him a break -- if he wants to get involved he'll let it be known," he said. "Nobody is going to refuse his call."

Chuck Schumer's reaction to Karl Rove's resignation seems to boil down to this: if he thinks leaving will spare him from the Alberto Gonzales mess, he's wrong.

From a statement released by Schumer's office: "Karl Rove's resignation will not stop our inquiry into the firings of the U.S. attorneys. He has every bit as much of a legal obligation to reveal the truth once he steps down as he does today."

Karl Rove’s resignation is easily the biggest news story today, and it broke first in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Typically, such news might appear on A1, in the right hand column. Instead, Mr. Rove’s anticipated date of departure—by the end of August—was reported on A15, in the sixth paragraph of an interview with editorial page editor Paul Gigot.

On the Journal’s front page, there is only a stock photograph of Mr. Rove waving and smiling, with the following teaser: “Why Karl Rove Plans to Leave The White House.”

At 6:46 a.m., The Journal published a news story that essentially reiterated what Mr. Gigot discovered in his exclusive interview, with the byline, “Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter.”

It wasn’t until the next hour that The Journal’s White House correspondent John D. McKinnon filed a news story. (Now, that piece includes a video interview with Mr. Gigot discussing his scoop).

So where was the Washington bureau on this story?

“We don’t talk about our internal news decisions,” said David Wessel, the Journal’s deputy Washington bureau chief.

He added: “As you know, the editorial page and the news department are separate.”

Of course, the Chinese Wall between editorial and news is a vital part of The Journal’s legacy.

But does that preclude Mr. Gigot from informing the news side of a huge breaking story, which he learned two days earlier?

Mr. Wessel declined to answer whether he was aware of Mr. Rove’s resignation before today.

Regardless, this scoop allowed Mr. Gigot the prime opportunity to show off the editorial page’s Washington clout to his future boss, Rupert Murdoch, said one Journal staffer. Mr. Murdoch, in recent interviews, has made no secret his intention to beef up the paper’s political coverage in the nation’s capital.

That said, would the New York Post’s editorial page hold such nugget—or, more likely, would the White House news be splashed across the tabloid’s wood?

A Journal spokesperson declined to comment on internal news decisions. Managing editor Marcus Brauchli is away, and could not be reached for comment. Page One editor Mike Williams could not be reached for comment. Mr. Gigot declined to comment.

 

Karl Rove is leaving the White House—and announced his exit in an exclusive interview with Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor Paul Gigot this morning. 

From the news article the paper ran to tease the Gigot column:

Mr. Rove, who has held a senior post in the White House since President Bush took office in January 2001, told Mr. Gigot he first floated the idea of leaving a year ago. But he delayed his departure as, first, Democrats took Congress, and then as the White House tackled debates on immigration and Iraq, he said. He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president's term in January 2009.

 read more »

Karl Rove told the Republicans it wasn’t going to be like this. He was to mastermind the explosion of the Republican “base,” making the G.O.P. into the default party in power and relegating the Democrats to permanent minority status. The much-vaunted independent swing vote would fade to irrelevance. Of course, that’s not the way things turned out.  read more »

Someday the Democrats may learn an important lesson about the collective wisdom of the media in the  read more »

Senator Charles Schumer finds it “hard to believe” that embattled U.S.  read more »

At long last, the fog of mystification generated by the Bush administration and the Washington media  read more »

I can't wait for the Republican fingerpointing to begin. I can't wait so much I want to start it myself!

My Monday-morning questions for Karl Rove: Why didn't you sacrifice everything else to try and hold the Senate? Howard Dean had a 50-state srategy, you should have had a 5-state strategy: Montana, Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee, Rhode Island. Right now it looks like you won one of those, and you needed two. How bad was your polling—why didn't you understand ten days ago that you had lost the House and forget about it? Most important, you famously abandoned Mike DeWine in Ohio, and good for you, but why didn't you abandon Pennsylvania? DeWine lost by 12 points but next door, even as the conservative websites were saying he was competitive, Rick Santorum lost by nearly 60/40. Santorum got absolutely crushed—in the most expensive race in Pennsylvania history. Why didn't you know this? Why did you put one nickel in Pennsylvania when power was inching out of your grasp in smaller markets?

What constitutes dirty money in Connecticut?

Here's the Ned Lamont campaign's explanation of the $500,000 contribution that Lamont just made to his own cause:

"I think it says more about Senator Lieberman's expenditures than it does about his (Lamont's) campaign," said Liz Dupont-Diehl, Lamont's spokeswoman. "Lieberman has outspent us two-to-one on tv ads and Ned's just not going to let that happen."

The reason for the gap in spending, she said, is Lamont's aversion to certain types of cash: He refuses to accept campaign contributions from any special interest lobbies, and limits his donor lists to "political leadership PACs" and grassroots-y groups like MoveOn.org.

Lieberman, on the other hand, "has the support of many Democrats and most of the Republicans, not to mention the fundraising help and advice of Karl Rove."

(Last month, Mel Sembler, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman, organized a fund-raiser for Lieberman that raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars.)

Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's spokesman, writes in with a very different take:

"Ned also crows about not taking PAC money, and then turns around and gladly accepts leadership PAC money from the likes of John Kerry. And where does that leadership PAC money come from? The same lobbyists and corporate interests that Ned is disingenuously attacking. That's Ned at his typical, hy-pac-critical worst. And just this week we learned that Ned is plugging a fundraiser he is doing with Ted Kennedy that is openly soliciting -- you guessed it -- PAC money."

--Jason Horowitz

Many a complacent D.C.  read more »

To observe the Washington press corps is to wonder why so many people who don’t remember what  read more »

The message reached Karl Rove on his BlackBerry: “FITZGERALD CALLED. CASE OVER.”  read more »

The message reached Karl Rove on his BlackBerry: “FITZGERALD CALLED. CASE OVER.”  read more »

Jason Horowitz asks if this is the beginning of the end of Rudy's bubble.

Anna Schneider-Mayerson reports that Karl Rove learned via blackberry that he would not be charged with a crime.

Matthew Schuerman reports on the courting of the 2008 Democratic convention.

In Opinions, Joe Conason, Niall Stanage and Richard Brookhiser share their sentiments.

And David Yassky in the editorials.

It’s more than the weather, the August doldrums: A dark mood seems to have descended on the ci  read more »

Something popped out of yesterday's Times report on the Libby-Cheney leak investigation: the name Joseph C. Wilson IV.

I thought the ambassador's name was Joe Wilson, or as his book, The Politics of Truth, is bylined, Joseph Wilson. I was curious about who all the other Joseph C. Wilsons were and I leafed through the book. Nothing. He says his mother's family was a big political family in California, but only says that his parents were "expatriate journalists and authors," though his father also "had a couple of jobs bringing American products to European customers, but the enterprises didn't work out." That's not very forthcoming. I have the strong sense that Wilson, former ski bum and diplomat, is a rich kid.

Yes, he was right about Niger, and we can hope this case brings Karl Rove and Dick Cheney down—but what sort of packaging is going on? Could the truthteller have a little more plain dealing about his own background?

Roll Call (subscription) reported yesterday that a poll prepared for Randy Kuhl's Democratic challenger, Eric Massa, has the Republican leading by three points, which is within the 4.4 percent error margin.

Although in a Republican dominated district, Kuhl is one incumbent of many that Democrats believe they can oust in this year's midterm elections. In 2004, Kuhl won the district with 51% of the vote.

From Roll Call:

In the poll, 33 percent of the voters had a positive view of Kuhl's job performance, while 50 percent had a negative opinion.

"Add yet another incumbent to the growing list that national GOP groups will be asked to bail out," pollster Alan Secrest wrote in his polling memo.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported last week on Kuhl's proud moment in front of the camera with President Bush, noting that it was Karl Rove who had snapped the picture. It was Kuhl that persuaded the president to visit Canandaigua last month.

An excerpt:

Democrats say it could be dangerous to pose for pictures with a president whose job approval rating has plummeted to the mid-30 percent range in recent polls. Bush lost New York in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, but won in Kuhl's district.

—Nicole Brydson

Time correspondent Viveca Novak, on leave since December after her embroilment in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case, left the magazine last week. Novak was one of three staffers in Time's Washington bureau to take a buyout in Time Inc.'s most recent round of staff reductions.

"She voluntarily resigned," managing editor Jim Kelly said.

Novak was brought in to talk to special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in November, after the prosecutor learned that she had discussed the Plame leak with Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin. In those discussions, Novak had told Luskin that Rove was a source for Time's Matt Cooper--a connection that the lawyer had previously not known.

Novak did not alert Time editors to her involvement in the investigation for 10 days, until Fitzgerald called her back to testify under oath. "Nobody was happy about it, least of all me," Novak wrote for Time in December. That was her last Time byline.

Novak could not be reached for comment.

--Gabriel Sherman

Nobody seems to like the guy.

From Hillary’s fundraising email today:

"We cannot let the agenda for Hillary’s campaign for re-election be dominated by negative attacks from the Karl Rove playbook."

But it’s not entirely clear that the all-but-certain Republican nominee, John Spencer, is using quite that playbook. Here’s what he said to me about Rove and Rove’s deputy, Sara Taylor, over lunch Monday:

“I heard that Sara Taylor was mad” about the Post story, he said. “But the hell with her—I don’t care about her being mad. What the hell do I care? I don’t care about her or Karl Rove.”

So who's this woman running against?

KT McFarland couldn't bring herself to say a bad word about Hillary in her appearance last night on Hardball. Though she did seem to have her interview chops intact from the old days.

MCFARLAND: I would not vote for impeachment. I think that one of the problems that we have is this gotcha politics where people are constantly looking to divide, looking to conquer, looking to impeach.

People are even talking now about impeaching President Bush. It's crazy. We've gotten this adversarial political system where all we do is look and try to find what`s wrong.

MATTHEWS: To use a phrase I heard from Hillary Clinton, you're not part of the vast right wing conspiracy?

MCFARLAND: I`m not part of any conspiracy.

On the other hand, if you were raising your profile for a future congressional run, you might play nice. To borrow a phrase from the anti-Hillary book: Is KT ... Karl Rove's...worst nightmare?

Having missed a February week of New York political news, I'm not sure I'll ever catch up.

But as far as I can tell, the biggest stories were Karl Rove's assessment of Hillary Clinton as "brittle" -- perfectly apt? or a head-fake to make her loosen up, and mess up? -- and Jeanine Pirro's move to make Rupert Murdoch regret the day he ever let the Post mess with her. (OK, her letter, which in a gentle way called his MySpace an online brothel, got a sum total of about eight column-inches, half of them at MidHudsonNews.com. But she tried.)

Other lessons learned last week: Puerto Rico's mountains are underrated. And never fly Continental.

—Ben Smith

The White House possesses several photographs of George W.  read more »

Time reporter Viveca Novak is scheduled to give a sworn deposition to special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald tomorrow, a spokesperson for the magazine confirmed.

Novak is expected to discuss under oath her conversations with Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney, in May 2004.

The New York Times reported last week that Novak may have told Luskin that Rove had been Time reporter Matt Cooper's source in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak affair.

Novak will give her deposition to Fitzgerald tomorrow without going before the grand jury. Fitzgerald's spokesperson Randall Samborn declined to comment. Novak and her attorney, Henry Schuelke, did not return calls seeking comment.  read more »

--Gabriel Sherman

Whatever indictments may or may not have issued from the grand jury sitting in Washington by the pub  read more »

Whatever indictments may or may not have issued from the grand jury sitting in Washington by the pub  read more »

Politics is notorious for its short memory. The lessons drawn are always the lessons from last year.

And so the Bloomberg campaign, despite its obvious fears about being linked to George Bush, seems to be reading from a Bush campaign script in its decision that the central line of attack on Freddy should be that he's a "flip-flopper."

"My opponent chose to take sides for reform, and against it," Mike said at Junior's yesterday, sounding just slightly like another Republican.

"Freddy's been able to take two sides of nearly every issue, so maybe he should debate himself," was Bill Cunningham's version the other day.  read more »

Obviously, flip-flopper is a potent political attack, and Karl Rove didn't invent it. But doesn't the phrase also remind people of Bush-Kerry?

One possible Ferrer campaign response that's been floating around: "Another Swift-Boat attack from Mike Bloomberg..."

When you have as much power as the American Republican Party, all strategy has a touch of palace intrigue. Just look at how Pirro has traded on hints of hints of support from Karl Rove.

And one Republican correspondent notes that the early hiring choices by Pirro, Weld, and Cox seem to reflect a possible divide between the New York insiders, led by Pirro advisor Kieran Mahoney, and the Bush insiders.

Weld, apparently, has signed up media man Russ Schriefer and lawyer Ben Ginsberg, both Bush family associates; Cox is using pollster Fred Steeper, an old Bush hand, and Ginsberg.

"In other words, the Bush boys are poised to challenge Kieran and Arthur," our corresondent writes of Pirro advisor Kieran Mahoney and his longtime collaborator Arthur Finkelstein.  read more »

But today, Pirro has made her own insider hire: Charles Black as a "senior campaign advisor."

"In addition, Pirro will bring in Mark Miller to serve as senior advisor and manager of all fundraising and Chris Mottola to handle television advertising," the press release says.

Ever since news organizations became queasy about the use of unnamed sources—the legions of lesser  read more »

Ever since news organizations became queasy about the use of unnamed sources—the legions of le  read more »

It’s more than the weather, the August doldrums: A dark mood seems to have descended on the ci  read more »

Ben Smith profiles state Republican Party Chairman Steve Minarik -- who, depending on who you talk to, assumes the features of a "Monroe County Karl Rove" or a hayseed Howard Dean -- as he pans across the post-Pataki landscape, looking for h