Behind Rove's Latest Lies

As Rove discounts new proof of his influence in the firing of U.S. attorneys, Rove biographer James Moore explains how “Bush’s Brain” has manipulated hard evidence for decades.
One of my chief personal goals with the departure of the Bush administration has been not to think any more about Karl Rove. If I were as indelicate as Barbara Bush, I might toss out the rhetorical jibe, “Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” Unfortunately, Rove refuses to disappear and I am saddled with knowing the historical context for his behavior, which, apparently, I am doomed to explain. My painful concession is that Rove and I are inextricably connected and share the certainty that the two words “Bush’s Brain,” the title of my biography of Karl, will be in both of our obituaries. Maybe I am obligated to keep casting a skeptical eye in the direction of his brooding darkness until we both are silenced by time.
When Rove is confronted by the same incontrovertible data he proclaims, “…I never sought to influence.” This is not denial; this is pathology.
Whenever I am compelled to consider Rove, though, my immediate thought is of a troubled soul with deep psychological issues. My sense is that in a different culture a man with such a practiced disconnection from reality would be likely to find himself marginalized instead of acting as an actor, commentator and consultant on matters of great social and political import. Even an armchair psychiatrist can see Rove is most likely pathological and much prefers the manufactured realities delivered to him by his determined mind than the sensory input he gets from the actual world.
Sure, I realize that is a slightly hyperbolic assertion, but allow me to build my case. There is no better body of evidence that the convolutions of Rove’s brain work in interpretive fashions far different from normal than the recent documents, including deposition transcripts and White House emails, revealed by the House Judiciary Committee. The material relates the involvement of Rove and White House Counsel Harriet Miers in the political firings of U.S. attorneys that were not serving Republican political purposes. Virtually every news outlet reported on the documents and characterized them as proof of political machinations by Rove and the Bush administration in the scheme to replace targeted U.S. attorneys LinkHere