Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove

I am very interested in political history. This is a very interesting book. I like to read different books with different opinions then form my own opinion. This book was well written and very insightful.

At times journalist Paul Alexander's book MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW: THE RISE AND FALL OF KARL ROVE reminds me of psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank's BUSH ON THE COUCH, a study of the emotional troubles that make George W. Bush what he is. As MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW recounts, Rove, the infamous political adviser of Bush, learned the man he thought was his biological father was a stepfather when the stepdad, announcing he was homosexual, dumped the family. Rove's mother then committed suicide. Karl Rove lost two fathers to rejection and a mother to suicide. The homosexual father went on to pose in body piercing magazines. MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW does not suggest what psychological effects all that had on Rove, who toiled in the direct mail business while repeatedly failing to make a name for himself as a political adviser. But with all the rejection he experienced in his family and career, it's as if Karl Rove attempted to deny reality, trying to make winners out of fellow losers such as George W. Bush, as no one with any credibility wanted him around. Rove often proved them right, falling on his face more than he would admit. According to this book: - the late political hatchet man Lee Atwater, whom Rove claimed to be his mentor, hated him. - Rove did not have the close relationship with George W. Bush he purports started when they met in the mid-1970s. They spent little time together until Bush hired Rove for his 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign. - George Iran-Contra Bush fired Rove from this 1988 presidential campaign for spreading lies about a political opponent. - Rove was one of the gang that couldn't shoot straight at the Florida elementary school September 11, 2001, as George W. Bush, Andy Card and he froze up after learning the second plane hit the World Trade Center, confirming America was in crisis. No political adviser worth his salt allows a client - a U.S. president, no less - to look as stupid as Bush did those long six-plus minutes after Card whispered the news, yet Rove could not think on his feet. Karl Rove, the man they deem "Bush's Brain," is in reality Bush's lame brain. In 2000 George W. Bush seized the White House not on account of Rove's savvy but because of Ronald Reagan's and George Iran-Contra Bush's partisan Supreme Court appointments. Without the five "justices" who stopped the 2000 Florida recount that would have awarded the Sunshine State and the presidency to Al Gore, Karl Rove would have gone back to licking postage stamps for a living, one more failed campaign under his belt. Naming every egregious Rove/Bush move would be like detailing each home run Hank Aaron hit; there were just too many to elaborate on all. Some that MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW neglects include: - regarding Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush knew the storm was to devastate New Orleans, as a meeting videotape proves. But after the warning Bush did nothing and, as MACHIAVELLI'S SHADOW reminds us, the Bush White House's inept response