Authors: Karl Rove
ISBN-13: 9781439191057, ISBN-10: 1439191050
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Date Published: March 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000?2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004?2007. He now writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal and is a Newsweek columnist and contributor to Fox News.
From the moment he set foot on it, Karl Rove has rocked America's political stage. He ran the national College Republicans at twenty-two, and turned a Texas dominated by Democrats into a bastion for Republicans. He launched George W. Bush to national renown by unseating a popular Democratic governor, and then orchestrated a GOP White House win at a time when voters had little reason to throw out the incumbent party. For engineering victory after unlikely victory, Rove became known as "the Architect."
Because of his success, Rove has been attacked his entire career, accused of everything from campaign chicanery to ideological divisiveness. In this frank memoir, Rove responds to critics, passionately articulates his political philosophy, and defends the choices he made on the campaign trail and in the White House. In the course of putting the record straight, Rove takes on Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Tom Daschle who acted cynically or deviously behind closed doors, and even Republicans who lacked backbone at crucial moments.
Among other controversial topics Rove addresses, he sets the record straight on:
Courage and Consequence is also the first intimate account from the highest level at the White House of one of the most headline-making presidencies of the modern age. Rove takes readers behind the scenes of:
…Courage and Consequence is an entertaining and enlightening memoir, written by a man who is well aware he will continue to be a polarizing figure no matter where he goes from here.
Prologue: The Road to History ix
1 A Broken Family on the Western Front 1
2 King of the College Republicans 23
3 Planting Roots in Texas 44
4 What Is a Rovian Campaign? 64
5 Conquering Texas 80
6 A New Kind of Governor 99
7 Glimmers of the White House 112
8 The Grand Plan 123
9 Stung by New Hampshire, Rescued by South Carolina 137
10 The Big Mo' 157
11 The Cheney Choice 166
12 Derailed by a DUI 177
13 Thirty-six Days in Hell 201
14 The Real West Wing 217
15 Thinking Big 234
16 9/11 249
17 Ground Zero 268
18 Striking Back 285
19 What Bipartisanship? 305
20 Joe Wilson's Attack 318
21 Bush Was Right on Iraq 332
22 The Special Prosecutor and Me 344
23 Getting Ready for Kerry 361
24 Drugs and Marriage 372
25 Trapping Kerry, Making Peace with McCain 378
26 Suspense and Victory 387
27 The Democrats Unleashed 404
28 Anything for a Scalp 425
29 Katrina 443
30 Republicans on the Run 460
31 The Surge 471
32 Yes, It Was Fun 485
33 Leaving the White House 493
34 Rove: the Myth 504
35 Obama: the Myth 517
Epilogue 535
Notes 539
Acknowledgments 589
Index 593