Rating: 
Summary: What is the price of "winning at all costs"?
Review: Karl Rove and his ilk are not new in the political arena nor are the use of "dirty tricks" and "hard ball" tactics used by Rove in order to have politicians he represents elected. "Bush's Brain" is a reminder of this.
Moore does a comprehensive job of detailing the life and influence of Karl Rove - the right hand man to George W. Bush. The material is shocking and reminiscent of the muckraking of the early 20th century. Like Turbell and Upton, it is difficult to read. What was most disturbing is that both Republicans and Democrats employ tactics and "advisors" like Rove.
Regading Karl Rove himself, the book presents much to dislike about the man and his alleged influence on George W. Bush. Ironically, the book also highlights much to admire in his political adroitness. The fact that both are so well balanced is one of the book's strengths. However, much of Rove's "influence" on the President is pooly supported. Undoubtedly Rove has played a role in the decisions Bush has made - but the extent to which Rove played a role is speculative at best. For that, I can only give it four stars.
Rating:
Summary: MACHIAVELLI IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Review: Karl Rove had an early association with the Bush dynasty. When George Bush senior was head of the Republican National Committee, Rove was his special assistant, tasting political power. What was it that Henry Kissenger had been fond of saying, "power is the most powerful aphrodesiac?" Rove also engineered the election of Jeb Bush to the governorship of Florida and George W. Bush's quest for the same position in Texas. There were certain practical problems to be overcome in that Texas race. For one thing, Bush wasn't considered a Texan by the citizenry. He was considered an imported easterner. Another was, relatively few knew the man and his "abilities." The latter was overcome when Bush became a Texas dry well oilman and then co-owner of the losing Texas Rangers baseball team. Gradually, Bush got the message from Rove and laughingly said he would rename his twin girls Dallas and Fort Worth! He had a tough opponent in Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, but beat her handily.
In Bush's presidency, Rove exploited the terrorist scare after the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers and the Pentagon, and then Bush's insistence on going after Saddam Hussein. The polls gave a big boost to the President's popularity.
"Bush's Brain" has the usual biographic material: Rove's parents, their divorce, his mother committing suicide, Karl's own divorce, and his never having earned a college degree. Comparisons are made with the President's college background, all gained in eastern-Ivy League schools. The two men are a study in contrasts, each enjoying their symbiotic relationship. Bush shines in genuinely liking people and appearing to be just like those he meets. Rove is a skillful fund-raiser, and an expert political analyst who can squeeze the most out of poel numbers, keeping an educated eye on changing demographics, knowing how to manipulate the media, working over people, starting whispering campaigns, with his big bag of political dirty tricks. Rove can not only apprehend the big picture, but he can micromanage it as well. The President nicknames him "the man with a plan."
Author James Moore is an Emmy Award-winning newscaster, and Wayne Slater, Bureau Chief of the Dallas Morning News, says Karl Rove guided George W. Bush along the path of success. They insist that Rove is nothing less than a type of co-president who wields tremendous influence and without whom George W. Bush probably never would have been successful in politics. They refer to the political advisor to the President as "Bush's Brain" and make a strong case for their claims. This book is mostly about Rove, not Bush.
"Bush's Brain" is the kind of muckraking that naturally buzzes around politics. It seems the authors strongly dislike Rove, but they admire his successes. Reluctantly, they give the devil his due.
Rating:
Summary: Rasputin Lives!
Review: Karl Rove has become, according to co-authors James Moore and Wayne Slater, the unelected, "Co-President" of America. He was the man that drove the policies that defined George W. Bush's stint as Texas Governor. Today he is the architect of White House policies on Capitol Hill. The authors state that it is unfair to characterize Rove simply as the puppet master and President Bush as the dimwitted puppet. It is more like, Rove acts as the filter through which President Bush learns and then President Bush makes an executive decision. They have a somewhat parasitic relationship as Rove is carried into the halls of American power through the body and face of George W. Bush.
"Bush's Brain" is the tale of two stories. The first story is of how Karl Rove came to be the "Co-President" of America. It traces Rove's history from his days as a skilled high school debater at Olympus School, Salt Lake City, Utah, to his days at college as a Young Republican to his career in Austin, Texas as the proprietor of direct mail business and political consultant for the Republican Party. The book describes in detail Rove's personality make-up, his uncanny photographic memory, his insatiable to desire to win at any cost and his lack of a moral compass. Karl Rove is a political machine, forged from the fire of a dysfunctional, broken family and fueled with the blood of blind loyalty to the party.
The second story is how Karl Rove became Rasputin to the Bush tsardom. George Herbert Walker Bush selected Karl Rove in 1973, to become chairman of the College Republican National Committee. I say selected instead of elected because apparently, the election for said position was in contest and had to be decided by then chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), Bush 41. In the end, the decision to choose Rove over his opponent was driven by blind loyalty to the PARTY. In the opinion of former President Bush, Rove's opponent had been disloyal and therefore branded a traitor. Rove got the gig and the message...only loyalty matters.
During this time, Rove was also hired by Bush 41 as a special assistant at the RNC. It was then when he met strapping young lad George W. Bush. W. would come down on weekends from Harvard Business School to borrow the car and cruise Washington DC for...well God only knows and it was Rove's job to hand him the keys to the Gremlin (yes, the car in question was a gremlin). Rove saw in young W. the makings of a marketable candidate and thus their parasitic friendship was formed. Bush would eventually go into public service has his namesake legacy would have it and Rove would have his racehorse to carry him into the White House.
A good chunk of the book deals with Rove's time in Texas and the campaigns he worked on (other than W's.) This is the meat of the book and the most telling part about the danger Karl Rove represents. The chapters entail Rove's use of dirty tricks to not only beat opponents for offices of public service, but to systematically end peoples careers and drive them out of politics. On Rove's trail of tears lie the careers of folks like Mike Moeller and Pete McRae whose political careers ended not in a lost election but a federal penitentiary. Other battered and broken political nemeses were Jim Hightower, Ann Richards and John McCain.
I thought the book was fair to Rove and President Bush. It neither treats the President like a moron nor does it explicitly say Rove is running the government. There are many points where the authors take great pains to show President Bush as a thoughtful, though not intellectually curious, decision maker and leader of men. They also paint a somewhat sympathetic portrait of Rove as someone who has obvious psychological failings but happens to have a job where that sort of ethical absence is a virtue to be rewarded.
The only part of the book I thought was ridiculous was the section that dealt with the Iraq war. First off, the authors go out of their way to rationalize their belief that the war was absolutely a bad idea. That's not the point of the book. I mean, there's only 100's of books that deal exclusively with that subject alone and they present arguments to back up their thesis. The authors tended to editorialize their opinions and present only their side of the argument. Now most people who will end up reading this book will already be of the belief that the war was a terrible idea so it won't offend them. It bothered me however because I felt like a pretty balanced accounting of the Bush Administration was marred by obvious partisanship and bias. It didn't ruin the book because it's only maybe two chapters but it was annoying. The authors should have presented what they thought were the facts of Rove's involvement in the Iraq War and then let the reader decide from there.
Overall I thought the book was interesting and it is certainly a cautionary tale of how political consultants can shape and control the political battleground. The lesson to be learned here is that the electorate has to be a bit more savvy to the machinations of people like Rove or only unaccountable people like Rove will end up running the government...if they aren't already.
Rating:
Summary: Physics of knuckleball
Review: Moore and Slater describe a political operator who adds the tools of science to nineteenth century knuckleball politics. These authors don't put it that way, though. Except for a brief mention of McKinley their horizons of history start after the Korean War. Their book cuts back and forth across time, place and topic -- making it definitely a "read." The serious reader, however, especially anyone who lacks a working knowledge of Texas, should plan to go through the book at least twice to knit together the many loosely woven strands.The authors seem unwilling to accept that some employees in Jim Hightower's administration at the Texas Department of Agriculture practiced "old boy" politics -- breaking the law by soliciting political contributions in connection with their work. If so, they were leaving their doors open to problems, and it becomes hard to feel sorry for them. The paperback edition adds half a sentence about the exposure of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA agent, through columnist Robert Novak, after Wilson's unwelcome report about lack of evidence for Iraq receiving uranium from Niger. Much more than half a sentence is warranted. The edition was put out too late to mention the January, 2004, Carnegie report saying that the government's information in 2002 indicated that Iraq had no effective nuclear or chemical weapons programs. Perhaps Moore and Slater will be inspired to write a sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing Glimpse Into US and Texas Politics
Review: My disclaimer is that I'm totally ignorant of state and federal politics and Moore is a friend of mine. While he and I share radically different views on many political topics, Moore clearly separates facts in this book from his conclusions and thus it's easy for the reader to draw his own opinion of what may or may not have happened; or at least enable you to score his opinions objectively. If you're a student of Texas state government or an avid Bush fan, you'll find this read very, very interesting. Look forward to the next Moore read.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely chilling--and Rove is just one of the hit-men
Review: Reading about Rove's contempt for fair play from the beginning of his career is absolutely chilling. The book is even-handed and meticulous, but presents so many cases where he damaged lives, careers and democracy with his political ruthlessness. What's frightening is how much influence he has on Bush today, and the fact that he isn't the only Lee Atwater disciple wielding power in the current Republican Party. Read David Brock's Blinded By the Light for a complementary tale of manipulation and dissembling. This book was obviously completed before the Republican ads that defeated Senator Max Cleland by calling him unpatriotic, even though Cleland had lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam--but that approach only buttresses the core points I take from this powerful book: The bullying tactics of people like Rove need to themselves become a political issue, because they represent a direct attack on our democracy. Paul Loeb
Author Soul of a Citizen
Rating:
Summary: The truth comes out
Review: Remember September 11th?????, December 5, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Anchorage, AK
Al (hillary lover) Franken and all the other liberal liars can go to hell. I bet they like this book. Yeah lets ruin our nation liberal dummys. This book says Bush is stupid. Its the liberals that are the stupid. Guess what? BUSH IS PRESIDENT! PRESIDENT BUSH IS A GODLY MAN AND IS TAKING THE FIGHT TO THE ARABS AND IT DRIVES THE LIBERALS CRAZY! THEY ARE CRYBABYS. BOO HOO HOO POOR MINORITYS!! Wah wah ATHESTS babys crying!! I LOVE IT. How about this: HANDS OFF MY TAX MONEY! The whiney liars can vote for Hillary and wreck our nation over MY DEAD BODY! I hope they get attacked by the terrorists . Buy a better book Ann Coutlers book. This person writing is my mentally retarded sister. She did it because my brother dared her. She doesn't know who Bush even is.
Rating:
Summary: not a polemic
Review: The 2 Texas journalists describe Rove as cynical, vengeful, amoral, smart and effective. As one source says, Nixon without the self-destructiveness. Clinton with discipline. A binary, good-guy/bad-guy worldview. Rove views every issue and event in terms of whether it will help or hurt his candidate. That includes trade tariffs, farm policy, the Iraq war, and whether or not to wreck the career of someone who might oppose him. Here is a quote: "...He has created a politics of pretense. Neither Rove nor the Bush administration give the electorate credit for being sophisticated enough to call them to account. If they were concerned about being caught, Rove would reduce the president's exposure to claims of hypocrisy and broken campaign pledges. Instead, Bush signs his education bill, the "Leave No Child Behind Act" with a smiling Ted Kennedy over his shoulder. This is the TV moment the electorate remembers, a president appearing to create bipartisan coalitions and endeavoring to "change the tone" in Washington while helping our children. When Bushed proposed a federal budget, however, funding for education was cut with the president authorizing only $22 billion of the $28 billion the measure called for. American needed money to increase military strength and pay for the president's tax cut." (p296) Bush comes across as a cipher. He is shown as shallow but not stupid. Completely unlike Rove, Bush seems to have principles beyond the expansion of his own power. But Bush's high-mindedness doesn't prevent him from having a right-hand man who uses every tool of the politics of meanness. A typical Rove tactic is to target a staffer in the employ of a political opponent, or someone who might be a challenger in future years, and have a surrogate voice accusations or suspicions about the staffer. Do it at the worst possible time, such as the day the opponent announces his candidacy. The authors cite about a dozen examples of this happening to Rove opponents, more often than mere chance would suggest. The book is well researched and concise, a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: he's too much of an insider to talk about bush
Review: This book does a really job detailing Karl Rove's character and the scandals that he has been involved in. If you want information about bush, read another book. The author goes ridiculously easy on bush, most likely because he does not want to jeopardize his access to the president.
Rating: 
Summary: Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidentia
Review: This book is full of totally unsubstantiated allegations and written by two disgruntled journalists. I would love to read a factual book about Karl Rove but this book isn't it.
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