Good article on Rove with his political biography

[uppityperson]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002380528_rove14.html

The man behind the man: Rove is the White House's key player

President Bush once said he would fire any White House staffer who had leaked the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. But if that source were Karl Rove, the president's longtime political guru, a firing would be a devastating blow to the White House. Rove, after all, is more than just a top presidential aide: He was the architect of Bush's rise to power. He orchestrates policy initiatives and is aggressively charting a course for long-lasting Republican dominance.

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At the time, Rove noted that Oregon's incumbent senator, Republican Gordon Smith, faced a difficult re-election. The Interior Department was then facing a question of whether to allow drought-stricken farmers to pull more water from Oregon's Klamath River, endangering the state's salmon population. Farmers are a critical part of that GOP base. An inspector general's report subsequently concluded there was no inappropriate pressure on the decision-makers in the Klamath case. But the controversial decision to release water to farmers resulted in the largest fish kill in the West and still angers Indian fishermen and environmentalists. Smith won re-election.

Rove also personally calls potential candidates for Senate seats, encouraging his favorites to run and urging others to stand down. Just last month, he met privately at the White House with the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Allan Bense, hoping to entice Bense to challenge Sen. Bill Nelson next year. The meeting came even though another prominent Republican, U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, had already announced her intention to run.

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The leaking of Plame's identity recalls an incident from the 1992 presidential campaign, in which Rove was fired from the elder Bush's re-election team because of suspicions that he had leaked information to columnist Robert Novak — the same columnist who first reported Plame's CIA role in 2003, citing anonymous administration sources.
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