Karl Rove will leave US President George Bush's side credited with near mystical and Machiavellian political powers and reviled by Democrats who repeatedly fell victim to his shadowy genius.
But the man dubbed "Bush's brain" and celebrated by the president as the "architect" of his two election victories also fell short of his cherished goal of forging a permanent, conservative Republican majority in Washington.
Rove, one of the most influential Washington players in decades, yesterday announced his resignation at the end of the month on the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, after six-and-a-half years at the epicenter of Bush's stormy presidency.
Officially deputy chief of staff at the White House, Rove's was the hidden hand on the hard-knuckle politics which drove Bush through a disputed election win in 2000 and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
Rove's legend was only slightly dimmed when the Democrats grabbed power in both the House of Representatives and the Senate last year.
He also leaves office with Bush's presidency apparently mired in a lame duck twilight, after the spectacular failure of immigration reform and with the entanglement of US troops in Iraq overshadowing the White House.
Rove will be remembered for putting an unyielding conservative imprint on Bush policy, from sweeping tax cuts and Supreme Court nominees to tapping the power of the religious right and social conservative voters.
Bush liked to call his chief political adviser his "boy genius," but opponents have preferred the Texas title "turd blossom."
Rove says he is leaving at the end of the month for family reasons, but there have been Democratic calls for his head ever since he was investigated over the naming of an undercover CIA operative whose husband was a leading opponent of the Iraq war.
While Vice President Dick Cheney's top adviser, Lewis Libby, was found guilty in court for lying over the leak, a special prosecutor decided there was no case against Rove who lived to fight a new political battle.
Congress is also demanding Rove's testimony over a row over the firing of federal prosecutors who critics say were sacked for political gain.
Rove helped Bush through Texas politics, the state governorship and to the ultimate prize -- the White House.
He used county by county mastery of the US political map to earn Bush his victory over Democrat Al Gore in 1999 and to return him to the White House ahead of John Kerry in 2004.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS