Rove's politics rooted in Utah experiences
Rove leaving White House
Rove said Monday that he is leaving Bush — after helping him twice win the presidency and win the governorship of Texas. Rove has guided Bush for years in strategy on how to win elections and implement policy goals.
Rove told the Deseret Morning News in 2002 that his time in Utah — where he attended Olympus High School and the University of Utah — taught him basic political strategy that helped take him and Bush to the top of the political world.
At Olympus, Rove said, teacher Pat Ferrell persuaded him to run for student-body president despite his image at the school, where he spent most of his free time in the library preparing for the debate team.
"I was the complete nerd," Rove said. "I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector. I wore Hush Puppies."
But he said Ferrell helped him recruit "the popular captain of the basketball team and an incredibly attractive senior girl to be chairmen of my campaign." Rove said they recruited the school's most talented artist to make witty campaign posters.
He won the race and said he learned that an underdog can win an "unwinnable" race by finding new ways to spread his message, doing the unexpected and having some luck.
Rove also said another mentor at Olympus was teacher Eldon Tolman. "He was everything I am not. He was a liberal Democrat. He loved labor unions," Rove said. But Tolman pushed Rove to work on the 1968 re-election campaign of former Sen. Wallace Bennett, R-Utah, solidifying Rove's taste for politics and building key contacts.
Ironically, Bennett that year defeated University of Utah political science professor J.D. Williams, who Rove said later became another mentor during the two years that Rove studied political science at the U.
Rove said that Democrats Williams and Tolman "taught me that no matter where you are in the political spectrum, you can love this country," and he said they helped him see how to appeal to both Democrats and Republicans.
Rove said he later worked with Bush to make Republican messages more palatable to Democrats. Bush "put it in terms that people could understand and spoke with a new vocabulary for a Republican," Rove said in 2002.
That included Bush describing himself as a "compassionate conservative," a phrase that many political observers credited Rove with coining, although he refused in an interview to take credit. "A lot of people do give me undue credit. It's part of the way that he (Bush) gets underestimated," he said.
Recent comments
Maybe Rove just pretended to be SB president, the way he's been pretending…
Christie | Aug. 30, 2007 at 3:45 p.m.
Being in that age group, I don't think Rove actually won the election…
Tom | Aug. 15, 2007 at 6:37 a.m.
The Darth Vader.... Can we last another 14 months...
Ain't it…Lynn | Aug. 14, 2007 at 8:50 p.m.
