Yay or Nay? Nay! (58%)

 

Consensus: An unrevealing defensive spin on the Bush Administration, this book will be of no historical consequence.

Genres: Biographies & Memoirs | Leaders & Notable People Bios | Non-fiction | Political Science | Politics | Social Sciences

Description: From the moment he set foot on it, Karl Rove has rocked America’s political stage. He ran the national College Republicans at twenty-two, and turned a Texas dominated by Democrats into a bastion for Republicans. He launched George W. Bush to national renown by unseating a popular Democratic governor, and then orchestrated a GOP White House win at a time when voters had little reason to throw out the incumbent party. For engineering victory after unlikely victory, Rove became known as “the Architect.”
 
Because of his success, Rove has been attacked his entire career, accused of everything from campaign chicanery to ideological divisiveness. In this frank memoir, Rove responds to critics, passionately articulates his political philosophy, and defends the choices he made on the campaign trail and in the White House. In the course of putting the record straight, Rove takes on Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Tom Daschle who acted cynically or deviously behind closed doors, and even Republicans who lacked backbone at crucial moments.
 
Among other controversial topics Rove addresses, he sets the record straight on:
 
- he facts of his mother’s suicide and reports of his father’s alleged homosexuality
- The accusation that he bugged his own office in Texas
- The real story of how George W. Bush defeated governor Ann Richards
- The details of Bush’s stealth campaign to win the White House in 2000
- Why Bush cratered in New Hampshire but prevailed in South Carolina in 2000
- How Bush chose Dick Cheney as his presidential running mate
- How the Bush campaign managed Bush’s DUI
- The defection of Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords
- The frustrating challenges of Hurricane Katrina
- The facts behind Rove’s painful three years fending off a federal indictment, and
- Why Obama is wrong on healthcare.
 
Courage and Consequence is also the first intimate account from the highest level at the White House of one of the most headline-making presidencies of the modern age. Rove takes readers behind the scenes of
 
- The bitterly contested 2000 presidential contest
- Every tense minute aboard Air Force One on 9/11
- The decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
- The hard-won 2004 reelection fight.
 
Rove is candid about his mistakes in the West Wing and in his campaigns, and talks frankly about the heartbreak of his early family years. He spells out what it takes to win elections and how to govern successfully once a candidate has won. But Courage and Consequence is ultimately about the joy of a life committed to the conservative cause, a life spent in political combat and service to country, no matter the costs. … [more]

Shop online for “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight” by Karl Rove:

17 Book Reviews for “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight” by Karl Rove

• Rove unrepentantly employs tart language and occasionally selective facts when assailing his targets, even as elsewhere he criticizes those very weapons when used by his adversaries…. Even if one disagrees with Rove’s politics … there are some valuable nuggets about how to run winning campaigns…. an entertaining and enlightening memoir, written by a man who is well aware he will continue to be a polarizing figure no matter where he goes from here.
  Published the 22nd day of April, 2010 in The New York Times | Reviewed by Mark Halperin | Full Review
  
• The hagiography would be more bearable if he spent less time attacking his opponents’ patriotism.
  Published the 5th day of April, 2010 in The New Yorker | Full Review
  
• Right-wing political skulduggery at its most devious…. It’s good. While it might make op-ed writers at The New York Times foam at the mouth,.. Rove knows how to spin a yarn and argue his corner. Yes, there’s the usual revisionism endemic to the genre. His defence of George W. Bush’s handling of WMDs and Katrina does more than strain credulity – Rove beats credulity to a mewling, incoherent pulp.
  Published the 1st day of April, 2010 in The Globe and Mail | Reviewed by Douglas Bell | Full Review
  
• One might have thought that time healed some of the wounds or that Rove were more magnanimous to his political adversaries…. Tilted toward settling scores rather than telling stories. Had Rove been more balanced in his approach, this interesting and timely memoir would have been more enjoyable and had broader appeal.
  Published the 24th day of March, 2010 in The Boston Globe | Reviewed by Claude R. Marx | Full Review
  
• Don’t buy the fake equanimity. “Courage and Consequence” is uncompromising and, in its defense of compassionate conservatism and the Bush administration, unrelenting. For Rove, a quiet man so unlike extroverted, egomaniacal White House divas like Henry Kissinger or Rahm Emmanuel, it’s also, unfortunately, unrevealing…. One reads “Courage and Consequence” waiting for an Oz moment, when the curtain is pulled back to reveal the man behind the curtain. Here, there’s just more curtain.
  Published the 18th day of March, 2010 in The Christian Science Monitor | Reviewed by Justin Moyer | Full Review
  
• Karl Rove’s long-awaited memoir is a spirited partisan defense of George W. Bush for unpopular decisions on the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina that dogged his presidency…. It’s a fast-paced 596 pages. Fascinating is his recollections of 9-11, and of Bush’s bullhorn moment that galvanized the country from the rubble of the World Trade Center…. Rove’s loyalty to Bush remains uncompromised.
  Published the 14th day of March, 2010 in San Antonio Express-News | Reviewed by Gary Martin | Full Review
  
• Even the most commendable loyalty does not compel dishonesty. Leaving out some awkward facts or unflattering moments, sure. But you’re going to need a full bottle of Tylenol — or Jack Daniels — to kill the pain of all the times you slap your head as you read Rove’s memoir. Rove should sue Burger King. His book, not their fast-food chain, is the true Home of the Whopper…. Thirty bucks is too much for Rove to ask of readers who have a right to something more than a brief but compelling personal narrative followed by 500 pages of dishonesty and deception.
  Published the 12th day of March, 2010 in Daily Beast | Reviewed by Paul Begela | Full Review
  
• Karl Rove can’t seem to stop spinning. On almost every page of this nearly 600-page book, the idea is to get readers to see things his way, even when his way flies in the face of reality…. And, on a personal note, though Rove’s wife, Darby, appears throughout, there’s no mention of their recent divorce. The most honest and affecting parts of the book are the early chapters, where Rove chronicles a wanderer’s childhood and a history of uneven parenting. These segments make clear, in ways both subtle and not, how Rove became the man he is. In the end, this book will change nobody’s mind. Those on the Right will cheer Rove’s detailed defense of Bush administration policies while those on the Left will give it the raspberry. And the political world spins on.
  Published the 15th day of March, 2010 in Booklist | Reviewed by Ilene Cooper | Full Review
  
• Rove addresses far more of his personal life than one would expect from a man who so effectively controlled information in the White House. That the drama is so touching and convincing leaves one to wonder if the master is again spinning with ease or, more fairly, if he isn’t entitled like anyone else to a compassionate ear for his sorrows…. He frames his memoir – the first substantial one from Bush’s innermost circle – as a chance to set the record straight. But it is as much an opportunity to settle scores. These track across a career in which Rove has moved from one firestorm to the next, always cool to the point of cold-blooded.
  Published the 3rd day of July, 2010 in The Washington Post | Reviewed by Steven Levingston | Full Review
  
• As for mounting a defence of the Bush years, “Courage and Consequence” is brittle. It does no more than defend…. Perhaps it was expecting too much of Rove to start revising anything. As it is, this book is unlikely to have much consequence.
  Published the 21st day of March, 2010 in The Independent | Reviewed by Mark Sellek | Full Review
  
• Rove has produced – that seems the right word – a curious memoir, clear in its antipathies and in its constrained but obvious affection for the Bush dynasty, particularly George W. The why of those antagonisms and affections is more obscure. Can it really come down to the geographic accident of birth and a feisty little girl down the street? Perhaps – or, maybe both are fruits of a largely unexamined life lived entirely within the hothouse of contemporary electoral politics.
  Published the 9th day of March, 2010 in Los Angeles Times | Reviewed by Tim Rutten | Full Review
  
• In all of the above, there are few surprises and little new to be learned…. However, he points out, most appropriately paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld, even if this is not the memoir you might have wished for, all you can do is to “settle into your easy chair with the book you have.”
  Published the 9th day of March, 2010 in The Christian Science Monitor | Reviewed by Marjorie Kehe | Full Review
  
• Karl Rove’s book “Courage and Consequence” is less memoir than hoax…. His distortions and fabrications are … wasting his opportunity to tell the truth, he offers absolutely nothing new, and his selective use of facts and quotes are a transparent effort to continue his long campaign to confuse people, unfortunately consistent with his past behavior…. His book is a pathetically weak defense of the disastrous policies pursued by the Bush administration…. If any additional proof to the irrefutable historical record were needed, Rove’s book demonstrates once again the actions of a vindictive, angry and petty man. Karl Rove betrayed his nation; now he has betrayed history.
  Published the 9th day of March, 2010 in The Huffington Post | Reviewed by Joseph C. Wilson | Full Review
  
• Leaving aside the grand title, Rove’s is a remarkable American life, and this memoir sets out a remarkable American tale…. Rove crams a lot of inside stuff into his memoir, notably a riveting account of the presidential party on Sept. 11, 2001.
  Published the 10th day of March, 2010 in Columbus Dispatch | Reviewed by David M. Shribman
  
• His delight jumps right off of the page…. Rove’s pride and tunnel vision about his campaign tactics aren’t anything new in the Washington memoir genre…. The historical value of the book itself is minimal. It functions, instead, as a test of whether Rove’s combination of pique and pride will be helpful as Bush administration veterans argue that they spent eight years changing America for the better, over the cries of critics, only to watch their work be ruined by Barack Obama and his pack of elitist liberals.
  Published the 10th day of March, 2010 in The Washington Independent | Reviewed by David Weigel | Full Review
  
• Rove! This book — this play for benign respectability, this gloss on a history that we all know well, the self-justifications, the confusing and strangely humanizing personal story — is the greatest dirty trick of all time. Ever. Damn you, Rove, you marvelous bastard: You had me. You totally had me. You, sir, have still got it. And all is right with the world.
  Published the 11th day of March, 2010 in Esquire | Reviewed by Mark Warren | Full Review
  
• This book is interesting in casting light on how these tactics were deployed in Texas-wide elections of the 1980s. But it is largely unrevealing about the Bush White House, partly because Rove is so cravenly loyal to his master, and partly because the author seems to lack any self-awareness or human curiosity…. And the suspicion hangs over this narrative that it might have been because Rove hadn’t yet had time to run the polling numbers.
  Published the 21st day of March, 2010 in The Times | Reviewed by Stephen Robinson | Full Review
  

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 8:28 PM and is filed under:
Biographies & Memoirs, Leaders & Notable People Bios, Non-fiction, Political Science, Politics, Social Sciences.

Tags: book review, Booklist, Claude R. Marx, Columbus Dispatch, Courage and Consequence, Daily Beast, David M. Shribman, David Weigel, Douglas Bell, Esquire, Gary Martin, Ilene Cooper, Joseph C. Wilson, Justin Moyer, Karl Rove, literary criticism, Los Angeles Times, Marjorie Kehe, Mark Halperin, Mark Sellek, Mark Warren, Paul Begela, San Antonio Express-News, Stephen Robinson, Steven Levingston, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times, The Washington Independent, The Washington Post, Tim Rutten

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