Michael Kazin: Rove fails where his hero succeeded
[Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University. He is author, most recently, of "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan" (Knopf, 2006).]
It may be admirable to model oneself on a successful figure from the political past. Who wouldn't want to write like Lincoln, transform policy like FDR and inspire his followers like Reagan and Debs? But to equal the accomplishments of one's idol is a far more difficult task.
History, after all, has a way of changing the terrain and rules of the political game, frustrating those who think they know how to win it.
During George W. Bush's first presidential campaign, Karl Rove told reporters he aimed to be the Mark Hanna of the 21st century. Like Hanna, the wealthy Cleveland industrialist who died in 1904, Rove would create a durable, conservative Republican majority by appealing to groups that had previously leaned Democratic -- particularly Hispanics and white Catholics.
For Rove, the folksy Bush would serve as the modern parallel to the genial William McKinley, Hanna's protégé and close friend. Both men were skillful, according to Rove, at bridging partisan divides and represented a softer, more compassionate image of their party than did the ideologues who preceded them.
During Bush's first term, Rove seemed to have a decent chance of achieving his objective. The president's resolute response to the terrorist attacks of September 2001 helped guide the GOP to victory in the 2002 midterm election and convinced most Americans to back the invasion of Iraq months later.
Although that support had dwindled by 2004, Bush was still a more credible commander in chief than John F. Kerry was, and his opposition to abortion and gay marriage helped him win the Catholic vote over his Catholic adversary.
The reversal of fortunes the president and his party have since endured has been widely blamed on the botched adventures in Iraq and New Orleans, as well as on the stink of corrupt dealings on high. But Rove has been unable to devise a way out of the mess, and his failure to follow the example of Hanna is part of the reason.
Like Rove, Hanna was a lightning rod for his Democratic critics. Hanna's cartoon portrait as a fat, pompous ass dressed in a tight suit checked with dollar signs -- created in 1896 by Homer Davenport of the New York Journal -- remains one of the more familiar images from that era.
But Hanna was one plutocrat who knew how to build coalitions with the common folk. He engineered McKinley's nomination in 1896 with the slogan "The People Against the Bosses." Then, during the general election campaign, he and his candidate wooed working-class voters with a pledge to guarantee "a full dinner pail" based on high tariffs that boosted their wages as well as the profits of their industrial employers.
In 1900, Hanna became the first president of the National Civic Federation, a group that tried to mediate conflicts between capital and labor and included AFL leader Samuel Gompers and social reformer Jane Addams on its board.
Hanna also persuaded most Republicans to ignore or downplay prohibition, the key "social issue" of the day. During the Gilded Age, the GOP's alliance with temperance activists, especially in the Midwest, had limited its appeal to many European immigrants.
But neither McKinley nor the two Republican presidents who followed him tried to outlaw the liquor business, which enabled them to win the votes of many German-Americans and Irish-Americans, key voting blocs whose members were fond of their saloons and beer gardens.
What is more, the master strategist did not work only behind the scenes. Hanna won three separate Ohio elections to the U.S. Senate, which -- in the days before popular elections to that body -- testified to his firm hold over the state legislature.
Hanna didn't live to see the fruition of his grand design. But using the pragmatic approach he pioneered, Republicans won seven of the nine presidential elections from 1896 to the Great Depression and controlled both houses of Congress for all but eight years during that span. The party was dominant or competitive everywhere outside the Deep South.
Rove knows this history as well as the handful of scholars who write about it do. Yet the strategy he has urged on his president and party is opposite that of Hanna. Instead of broadening his GOP's base in a divided nation, Rove has relied on Big Business and the Christian right to rally their loyalists.
Instead of enacting programs that could have given substance to the slogan of "compassionate conservatism," he led Republicans to pass big tax cuts, oppose a hike in the minimum wage and, until recently, deny the facts about global warming.
A strict adherence to conservative gospel buoyed Republicans as long as the administration seemed a reliable defender of national security. But that polarizing stance has made them vulnerable as Bush's incompetence has outweighed his toughness. It would have been shrewder to imitate Hanna's method of triumphing through compromise.
Granted, Rove's ambition is harder to fulfill. It may not be possible for any political party to achieve the domination Hanna's GOP enjoyed for more than a generation. The percentage of independent voters is far higher now, and it's harder to enforce partisan discipline at a time when candidates raise funds for themselves and can't avoid taking a stand on every controversial issue.
But the affable Rove has all but ensured that he won't match the feat of his grimmer role model. And Bush's successor, whoever he or she may be, will likely repudiate his brand of politics instead of seeking to emulate it.
Read entire article at The Politico
It may be admirable to model oneself on a successful figure from the political past. Who wouldn't want to write like Lincoln, transform policy like FDR and inspire his followers like Reagan and Debs? But to equal the accomplishments of one's idol is a far more difficult task.
History, after all, has a way of changing the terrain and rules of the political game, frustrating those who think they know how to win it.
During George W. Bush's first presidential campaign, Karl Rove told reporters he aimed to be the Mark Hanna of the 21st century. Like Hanna, the wealthy Cleveland industrialist who died in 1904, Rove would create a durable, conservative Republican majority by appealing to groups that had previously leaned Democratic -- particularly Hispanics and white Catholics.
For Rove, the folksy Bush would serve as the modern parallel to the genial William McKinley, Hanna's protégé and close friend. Both men were skillful, according to Rove, at bridging partisan divides and represented a softer, more compassionate image of their party than did the ideologues who preceded them.
During Bush's first term, Rove seemed to have a decent chance of achieving his objective. The president's resolute response to the terrorist attacks of September 2001 helped guide the GOP to victory in the 2002 midterm election and convinced most Americans to back the invasion of Iraq months later.
Although that support had dwindled by 2004, Bush was still a more credible commander in chief than John F. Kerry was, and his opposition to abortion and gay marriage helped him win the Catholic vote over his Catholic adversary.
The reversal of fortunes the president and his party have since endured has been widely blamed on the botched adventures in Iraq and New Orleans, as well as on the stink of corrupt dealings on high. But Rove has been unable to devise a way out of the mess, and his failure to follow the example of Hanna is part of the reason.
Like Rove, Hanna was a lightning rod for his Democratic critics. Hanna's cartoon portrait as a fat, pompous ass dressed in a tight suit checked with dollar signs -- created in 1896 by Homer Davenport of the New York Journal -- remains one of the more familiar images from that era.
But Hanna was one plutocrat who knew how to build coalitions with the common folk. He engineered McKinley's nomination in 1896 with the slogan "The People Against the Bosses." Then, during the general election campaign, he and his candidate wooed working-class voters with a pledge to guarantee "a full dinner pail" based on high tariffs that boosted their wages as well as the profits of their industrial employers.
In 1900, Hanna became the first president of the National Civic Federation, a group that tried to mediate conflicts between capital and labor and included AFL leader Samuel Gompers and social reformer Jane Addams on its board.
Hanna also persuaded most Republicans to ignore or downplay prohibition, the key "social issue" of the day. During the Gilded Age, the GOP's alliance with temperance activists, especially in the Midwest, had limited its appeal to many European immigrants.
But neither McKinley nor the two Republican presidents who followed him tried to outlaw the liquor business, which enabled them to win the votes of many German-Americans and Irish-Americans, key voting blocs whose members were fond of their saloons and beer gardens.
What is more, the master strategist did not work only behind the scenes. Hanna won three separate Ohio elections to the U.S. Senate, which -- in the days before popular elections to that body -- testified to his firm hold over the state legislature.
Hanna didn't live to see the fruition of his grand design. But using the pragmatic approach he pioneered, Republicans won seven of the nine presidential elections from 1896 to the Great Depression and controlled both houses of Congress for all but eight years during that span. The party was dominant or competitive everywhere outside the Deep South.
Rove knows this history as well as the handful of scholars who write about it do. Yet the strategy he has urged on his president and party is opposite that of Hanna. Instead of broadening his GOP's base in a divided nation, Rove has relied on Big Business and the Christian right to rally their loyalists.
Instead of enacting programs that could have given substance to the slogan of "compassionate conservatism," he led Republicans to pass big tax cuts, oppose a hike in the minimum wage and, until recently, deny the facts about global warming.
A strict adherence to conservative gospel buoyed Republicans as long as the administration seemed a reliable defender of national security. But that polarizing stance has made them vulnerable as Bush's incompetence has outweighed his toughness. It would have been shrewder to imitate Hanna's method of triumphing through compromise.
Granted, Rove's ambition is harder to fulfill. It may not be possible for any political party to achieve the domination Hanna's GOP enjoyed for more than a generation. The percentage of independent voters is far higher now, and it's harder to enforce partisan discipline at a time when candidates raise funds for themselves and can't avoid taking a stand on every controversial issue.
But the affable Rove has all but ensured that he won't match the feat of his grimmer role model. And Bush's successor, whoever he or she may be, will likely repudiate his brand of politics instead of seeking to emulate it.