Karl Rove’s Idea of the Special Relationship

Dave Weigel has an entertaining takedown of Karl Rove’s new memoir Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight (a title that, oddly, is simultaneously vainglorious and reeking of self-pity). Meanwhile, here’s a snippet of the Rovian style, as relayed by Andrew Rawnsley in his new book*. It’s December 2000 and George W Bush has just become President:

[Sir Christopher] Meyer [then British ambassador to Washington] had done his best to cultivate relationships with the Bush team. Karl Rove, Bush’s senior political strategist sent both encouragement and a warning, via Meyer: “You’re going to start with a blank sheet of paper. By your works shall ye be known.”

Blair’s critics might contend that he took this warning to heart and held it there too close and for too long. But what’s interesting is the light this shines on Rove’s preferred operating style (and that of the Bush White House more generally, at least in its first term): even allies can’t be trusted.