Redstate

The thing is, the legend of Karl Rove and the reality of Karl Rove aren't the same. I will give Karl Rove credit for engineering some impressive electoral victories, although Ken Mehlman deserves much of the credit as well.

Karl Rove is basically a numbers man. He's the guy who took the art of campaigning and made it a science. He pioneered techniques of using statistical data to precisely target specific segments of the electorate. However, when it comes to policy, he's clueless. The policies that have Rove's fingerprints all over them - NCLB, the steel tariffs, the Medicare prescription drug bill, etc., were all failures in terms of policy. Rove is expertly able to craft a message so that it will reach a particular voting demographic, but he's not a policy wonk and never has been.

All those who think that Rove is somehow Bush's brain might be right when it comes to campaigns, but when it comes to policy, Rove doesn't strike me as the sort of person who has a particularly big influence.

If this were 2004, the loss of Rove would be a major setback, but in 2005 when the President doesn't have to face the voters again, it's not that big a loss. The Democrats have spun Rove into some kind of sinister Svengali-esque puppet master when the reality is that Karl Rove is a great campaign consultant, but hardly the linchpin of the Bush Administration.

(And yes, I'm making some assumptions about Rove's influences on policy which may or may not be true.)

Does bush really need Rove anymore now that he has no more elections to run for?  Rove can advise Republicans whether he's in the White House or out.

You have no stronger supporter than I.  But you need to hear what others are also saying.

1.  Change Rove soon.  He is no longer effective.
   
2.  Appoint Miers to the 5th Circuit. She is a good person and got a bad deal.  Life is not fair, so accept it. Appoint a strong textualist conversative with academic or judicial experience to the Court.  Go nuclear if you must, to confirm.
   
3.  Put off private accounts.  They are a good idea, but will not fly, now.  Propose raising the retirement age for SS.  That will solve most of the problem and would be bold.  You'll get heat for it, but who cares . . . the numbers will support you.
   
4.  Join the cut the pork movement.  Lead in the Republican Districts and make the Dems look like hypocrites.  I think they'll cooperate in looking that way.  Democrats want money for sculptures . . . ok, let them have it . . . we don't work that way.  Name some names.
   
5.  Put off tax reform temporarily.  A VAT and a flat income tax is the best way to go, but it will not pass at the moment.  You need to succeed right now.  The commission report has some good ideas, but overall, they are boring and too little and will just create more controversy, which is in no one's interest (at least not your's) at the moment.
   
6.  Appoint someone strong to lead the re-building of New Orleans and other disaster areas.  Wilma will give you another opening this weekend to do just this.  If you don't, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin will waste what they don't steal.  You'll be blamed for it.

Because of Deaver's 1987 conviction he will never I mean never be in another Republican White House again.

All the President needs right now is more controversy. This would surely bring it right on.

Bush is indisputably completely dependant on Rove.  If this wasn't the case Rove would have been gone long ago.

You must have slept awfully late yesterday, my friend.

And Fitzgerald's playing pretty close to his chest.

So, before libs order the champagne, and conservatives start bemoanins how to replace him ... let's see what Fitzgerald actually does.

While I agree that the mishandling of the SS debate has doomed the introduction of personal accounts, I'm not sure that simply raising the retirement age is the solution.

How do you tell the average blue collar worker that they have to keep working in manual labor jobs until they are 71 or 73?  I don't know that they could do that.

Why isn't means testing Social Security a better option?  Do people with assets or other income exceeding some threshold, say $1 million in assets or $100,000 in pension income, really need social security?

Mehlman, like Rove, is a tremendous asset in terms of his knowledge of the nitty-gritty business of winning votes retail.  I agree that it's never been clear that Rove is much of a policy guy as opposed to a campaign guy.

One reason we get lame duck presidencies is that second-term presidents wind up surrounded by second-rate people when the first crop of aides burns out, leaves to run for office, gets indicted, etc.  The Bush Administration isn't beyond repair yet; there's three years to go, and some important battles to fight that can still be won.  What Bush needs is the courage to go out and add some fresh new top-quality people to the team who can bring in some new perspectives on how to sell the existing unfinished agenda as well as how to deal with the spending issue.

I don't think it's fair to punish people for being prudent with their money.  

Personally I like the idea of creating an opt-out in which someone can choose to opt-out of SS and receive a tax exemption on their 401(k)/IRA wihtdrawals.

Bush is indisputably completely dependant on Rove.

You know, I've heard that The President cannot even wipe himself without Rove in the WC to provide a helping-hand.

Then there's the whole story of how Bush cannot eat without Rove showing him how to hold the fork in one hand and the knife in the other, unless there's soup on the menu in which case...

Please Lord, better trolls.

the "common knowledge," then Karl Rove becomes Bush's brain sine qua non.  It's difficult to chisel through a "known fact" when they are the parlance of the moment.

I wouldn't say Rove is Bush's brain, but I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume that Rove has some influence on the President's decisions, or at least in the presentation of those decisions.  If Rove does leave the WH, I'm really interested to see what if anything changes (as far as Bush's second term agenda and it's presentation/talking points).

Anyone want to wildly speculate on some possibilities?

There's danger in putting too much stock in all the rumors flying around, but if we believe (for the sake of argument) that Bush and Rove have had a falling out since Bush learned of Rove's role in this, could we already have seen the effect of Rove's diminished influence?

I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume that Rove has some influence on the President's decisions, or at least in the presentation of those decisions

I would argue to those points "No" and "Certainly".  Perhaps this is just my naiveté showing, but I really don't think Rove has anything to add on the policy front - he's a campaign guru.  Don't know though, speculating.

As to your second, I think it's entirely possible that we're seeing little more than the effects of a White House that was caught badly off-stride coming off a "vacation" (caveats on the use of that term aside) that lasted too long and ended far too unceremoniously with the arrival of Katrina and the disintegration of NOLA.  Note that I use the terms "little more" not to try to minimize the level of disorientation of the WH (or perception, thereof).  Clearly the perception (or perhaps reality) is that the wheels have come-off at 1600 Penn Ave NW DC and nearly everything they've advanced since leaving Crawford has exacerbated that perception.

Add to that the polarization of the electorate, fed a steady diet of gloom and doom vis-a-vis Iraq (awful quiet in the MSM since the election), gas prices (down almost 25% off the highs in my part of the world - I blame Bush), Plame-Gate™ (Rove, Scooter, the Veep are all gonna get Perp-Walked, depending on who you talk to), and the general sense that the GOP is the gang that cannot govern straight (DeLay, Frist, Miers' roll-out, Pork-a-thons, etc.), and frankly it's a bit of a shock that Bush's numbers are not worse than they are.

Then again, I could be way, way off.  Who knows?  Just some more "food for the grey matter".

When you say opt-out, do you mean they (and their employer) wouldn't have to contribute to SS then?  I'd be for that in a heartbeat.

Aside from the shrieks of joy from the cheap seats in the Democratic party, the GOP would survey quite nicely. We have a deep bench. Besides a Rove trial would mean that a lot of reporters might get called in to testify. Wouldn't that be a kick?

In a day where polling and focus group testing shape proposed legislation ... or at least how it is packaged and sold ... a political consultant is very important.   As someone pointed out above Karl Rove has turned this into a science.  There is a reason why he is the first political strategist to get an office in the West Wing.

You also have a President that appears to value familarity and trust a great deal.  Rove has been with him a long long time.

Given these things, I think it is interesting to speculate how the White House would regroup, restaff and go forward.  Of course the one thing that is certain is that it will go forward.  

This is truly insulting to the President, a man of great vision and tremendous political intelligence of his own.  He's the one America elected, not Karl Rove.

should I chose (as I did in this case) to judge as a troll someone who launches the "Rove=Bush's-Brain" Talking Point™ with his/her first-ever comment at RedState.  I could be wrong - but experience tends to indicate otherwise.

Also, as I've been happy to engage in the discussions up-thread, I hope that I've demonstrated my willingness to speculate on how the White House would attmept to move forward.

My answer: recall Karen Hughes back into service - immediately, yesterday if possible.  At least, that's what I hope they'll do.

I don't disagree with you conceptually, but means testing with respect to Social Security is essentially a tax on the "rich".

And that is a concept that would be dead before it even started coming out of the GOP.

One of the fundamental tenets of conservative tax policy is that everyone should be treated the same, and taxed the same. People should be punished for success (or inheriting a bunch of money, for that matter).

If you mean-test social security, and use an asset threshold (for argument's sake, let's say $1 milllion, although that's awfully low these days) then you're essentially requiring those people to pay the social security contribution into the system and get nothing back.

That's taxing the rich.

I believe John Kerry proposed that. And that's a no-no.

While your points and reasoning are all quite solid, I think you vastly underestimate how much priority Bush places on working with people he knows well, feels a great deal of loyalty, and a great deal of familiarity.

IF Rove were to get whacked with an indictment, Bush is going to  fall back on someone he already has a good relationship with  and who's shown their loyalty.

That's how Bush rolls.

I agree.  There has a fair amount of commentary recently about the different skills required for campaign execution and governance leadership (of course not totally mutually exclusive).  Regardless of what happens to Rove (indisputability, a political genius), I think Bush would benefit from brining in some good policy/strategy wonks, reevaluate their plan for the next few years, and then execute like heck. It's not a hit on the current team-- an organization can always benefit from some fresh perspective, "thinking out of the box" etc.  Like a good CEO of a corporation, things change, bring in good people, reevaluate, and strive to be best in class.  

done so far.  Familarity and trust are one thing, but qualifications are another.  (There is an example of a possibly huge conflict between the two going on before our eyes right now.)

The President needs to break that mold.  He needs someone who will set the interactive ship aright.

Did you miss the speech in which the President himself proposed means-testing?

Politically, it was a good move that put the Democrats in a tough spot.  It appeals to liberal ideals, and from a common-sense perspective it's hard to argue that millionaires really need that tiny SS check every month.  But from a political perspective, the Democrats knew that once you turn SS from a pension system into a welfare program, you make it that much easier to cut it in the future, because programs for the poor are invariably the first to go.  And that's why very few Democrats ended up signing onto a concept that, as you say, sounds like something that might have come out of John Kerry's mouth under different circumstances.

Upon reaching retirement you would be given a choice between receiving SS payments OR you can choose an exemption on your withdrawals from your retirement plan.

Say we make the exemption $1,000,000.  If you have a million dollars in your 401(k)/retirement fund you could withdraw a million dollars tax free.  

Using current tax rates you would save yourself $150,000.   For arguments sake let's say you would receive $2,000 a month from SS.  That means that it would take 6 years of benefits from SS to match the gains you would get from the exemption.  This doesn't factor in the additional gains you could realize by having that money upfront and reinvesting it.

but a)Bush conceded that personal accounts wouldn't solve the shortfall, and b)the left, with the help of the AARP and MSM, appears to have won the pr war casting personal accounts as destroying social security. So I have to conclude that personal accounts are not going to be part of a fix for the forseeable future.

That leaves raising retirement age, raising taxes (or wage ceiling) or means testings.

Raising retirement age- as someone else may have noted, how do you tell a construction worker they are going to have to keep working until 71?

Rasing taxes/wage ceiling- Social security is already a bad economic deal. Rather than pay more of my money to get the same weak payout in the future, I'd rather keep that money that would otherwise be taxed, and invest it myself for a decent return.

That leaves means testing, which you are right, is effectively a tax on people at one end of the income scale and violates conservative tax principles, but if it means not having to pay any more money into the system, I think its the least worst option, and based on the likely options above,I think a lot of people on "right" half of the income scale would agree with me.

Well, I like what I thought you were advocating better...

But that idea is actually pretty interesting, certainly would serve as an inducement to invest wisely.

might be exactly what is needed!

It would also free Rove up to start grooming George Allen Or Mike Pence for `08???

Actually, I thought Bush proposed raising the cap on income above the current 90K.

And when he did that, he got housed by the anti-tax Right. I remember Krauthammer railling against it.

No matter what you do - whether it's means-testing or raising the cap on taxable income, it's raising taxes.

And that was, in part, why Bush was in a box. Once he conceded the obvious point that private accounts would not cover the shortfall, he was cooked.

I think you're absolutely right. He should break the mold.

And I think the President will absolutely not do it.

There's a fine line between being resolute and decisive and being stubborn. Bush is probably both.

But breaking his mold would implicitly mean conceding that he's made mistakes. And that's simply not something he's going to do.

Five years into his Presidency, Bush is not going to suddenly say, "You know what? Enough with this loyalty to people close to me, and depending only on people I've known for a number of years. I'm going to inject new blood."

Not going to happen. As they say, "You go with the ones that brought you to the dance."

No thanks.

I do agree that a shake-up at the WH is needed, whether or not Rove leaves. It seems to me that Card should the first to go, and after what Gillespie said...

Interesting idea on getting a Reagan guy, Bush NEEDS more Reagan, imo.

he does much more for the party in that positin than he could working at the WH.

There are other people who can work that, but the GOP should keep Mehlman druming up money and support for the GOP-he makes a very clear, concise and focused top guy for the party.

Russert et al wouldn't get promises that the questioning would only be limited to specific things.

If I remember right Russerts deal was that he would say only what Libby told him, and not what he told libby or who else he talked to (it has been a while).

But basically, in a trial, there is going to be a defense attorney, and they are going to demand more answers than a prosecutor in a GJ room.

I am still not all that convinced that there are going to be any indictments though-I suspect if they are, they will be of the Martha Stewart variety-lying to investigators or possible perjury, rather than anything to do with the "outing" of Plame.

Whatever the charge, a Rove trial could get messy for the White House press corps. If it comes down to who told what and when more reporters may be asked to reveal sources. One thing leads to another...

Then finally the illusion may be dispelled that this is anything other than a welfare program. At the same time, roll it into the income tax and eliminate FICA while you are at it. Why should Bill Gates pay the same FICA as someone making $90k a year?

Those two steps would solve SS solvancy issues for a very long time, and even Medicare (which is in worse shape) for a while.

A regressive tax on working families that is redistrubted in monthly checks to Warren Buffet... since when is that a conservative idea?

Bush values loyalty, and wants to work with "his" people too much to bring in somebody from the outside.

If they bring in anybody - I expect them to "recall" Karen Hughes - and she'll take KR's spot.

"Conservative activist Grover Norquist finds it hard to imagine one person handling Rove's job."

"Karl is sufficiently sui generis (unique), it would take two or three different people to replace him," Norquist said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush_replacements;_ylt=AoDRNIbcOc1TJWUzVKyIQD6s0
NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

Karl Rove's unique role within the White House is not simply a media or Democrat perception. It is a widely held notion on both sides of the aisle.