A Rove tidbit:

Dan Froomkin wrote this two years ago:

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration.

That's Frooomkin quoting a NYTimes article that cites Republicans and not official White House sources. So what role did Rove play managing post-Katrina reconstruction? What really happened? From Sourcewatch, we get this:

Bush dispatched Rove and "other aides to assemble ideas from agencies, conservative think tanks, GOP lawmakers and state officials to guide the rebuilding of New Orleans and relocation of flood victims," Jim VandHei and Jonathan Weisman wrote in the September 14, 2005, New York Times. "The idea, aides said, is twofold: provide a quick federal response that comports with Bush's governing philosophy, and prevent Katrina from swamping his second-term ambitions on Social Security, taxes and Middle East democracy-building."

So maybe that was the extent of it. But still, it would have been a good question to Rove on the Sunday shows: "What did you do in terms of managing post-Katrina reconstruction?"


posted by Quiddity at 8/20/2007 05:43:00 AM