|
Ex-Aide Says He’s Lost
Faith in Bush
JIM RUTENBERG
NY
Times
Sunday April 1, 2007
In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s
early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic
appeal.
A top strategist for the Texas Democrats who was disappointed by
the Bill Clinton years, Mr. Dowd was impressed by the pledge of
Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation
to Washington. He switched parties, joined Mr. Bush’s political
brain trust and dedicated the next six years to getting him to the
Oval Office and keeping him there. In 2004, he was appointed the
president’s chief campaign strategist.
Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.
In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal
from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.
He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a
shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across
the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of
the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved
aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing
with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced
by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.
“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed
in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become
more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”
In speaking out, Mr. Dowd became the first member of Mr. Bush’s
inner circle to break so publicly with him.
He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But,
he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so
great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role
in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.
Mr. Dowd, a crucial part of a team that cast Senator John Kerry
as a flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security
during wartime, said he had even written but never submitted an
op-ed article titled “Kerry Was Right,” arguing that
Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate,
was correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from Iraq.
“I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called
to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma —
is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way
they should have,” Mr. Dowd said. “Just being quiet
is not an option when I was so publicly advocating an election.”
Mr. Dowd’s journey from true believer to critic in some ways
tracks the public arc of Mr. Bush’s political fortunes. But
it is also an intensely personal story of a political operative
who at times, by his account, suppressed his doubts about his professional
role but then confronted them as he dealt with loss and sorrow in
his own life.
In the last several years, as he has gradually broken his ties
with the Bush camp, one of Mr. Dowd’s premature twin daughters
died, he was divorced, and he watched his oldest son prepare for
deployment to Iraq as an Army intelligence specialist fluent in
Arabic. Mr. Dowd said he had become so disillusioned with the war
that he had considered joining street demonstrations against it,
but that his continued personal affection for the president had
kept him from joining protests whose anti-Bush fervor is so central.
Mr. Dowd, 45, said he hoped in part that by coming forward he would
be able to get a message through to a presidential inner sanctum
that he views as increasingly isolated. But, he said, he holds out
no great hope. He acknowledges that he has not had a conversation
with the president.
Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, said Mr. Dowd’s
criticism is reflective of the national debate over the war.
“It’s an issue that divides people,” Mr. Bartlett
said. “Even people that supported the president aren’t
immune from having their own feelings and emotions.”
He said he disagreed with Mr. Dowd’s description of the president
as isolated and with his position on withdrawal. He said Mr. Dowd,
a friend, has “sometimes expressed these sentiments”
in private conversation, though “not in such detail.”
During the interview with Mr. Dowd on a slightly overcast afternoon
in downtown Austin, he was a far quieter man than the cigar-chomping
general that he was during Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign.
Soft-spoken and somewhat melancholy, he wore jeans, a T-shirt and
sandals in an office devoid of Bush memorabilia save for a campaign
coffee mug and a photograph of the first couple with his oldest
son, Daniel. The photograph was taken one week before the 2004 election,
and one day before Daniel was to go to boot camp.
Over Mexican food at a restaurant that was only feet from the 2000
campaign headquarters, and later at his office just up the street,
Mr. Dowd recounted his political and personal journey. “It’s
amazing,” he said. “In five years, I’ve only traveled
300 feet, but it feels like I’ve gone around the world, where
my head is.”
Mr. Dowd said he decided to become a Republican in 1999 and joined
Mr. Bush after watching him work closely with Bob Bullock, the Democratic
lieutenant governor of Texas, who was a political client of Mr.
Dowd and a mentor to Mr. Bush.
“It’s almost like you fall in love,” he said.
“I was frustrated about Washington, the inability for people
to get stuff done and bridge divides. And this guy’s personality
— he cared about education and taking a different stand on
immigration.”
Mr. Dowd established himself as an expert at interpreting polls,
giving Karl Rove, the president’s closest political adviser,
and the rest of the Bush team guidance as they set out to woo voters,
slash opponents and exploit divisions between Democratic-leaning
states and Republican-leaning ones.
In television interviews in 2004, Mr. Dowd said that Mr. Kerry’s
campaign was proposing “a weak defense,” and that the
voters “trust this president more than they trust Senator
Kerry on Iraq.”
But he was starting to have his own doubts by then, he said.
He said he thought Mr. Bush handled the immediate aftermath of
the Sept. 11 attacks well but “missed a real opportunity to
call the country to a shared sense of sacrifice.”
He was dumbfounded when Mr. Bush did not fire Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld after revelations that American soldiers had
tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Several associates said Mr. Dowd chafed under Mr. Rove’s
leadership. Mr. Dowd said he had not spoken to Mr. Rove in months
but would not discuss their relationship in detail.
Mr. Dowd said, in retrospect, he was in denial.
“When you fall in love like that,” he said, “and
then you notice some things that don’t exactly go the way
you thought, what do you do? Like in a relationship, you say ‘No
no, no, it’ll be different.’ ”
He said he clung to the hope that Mr. Bush would get back to his
Texas style of governing if he won. But he saw no change after the
2004 victory.
He describes as further cause for doubt two events in the summer
of 2005: the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina
and the president’s refusal, around the same time that he
was entertaining the bicyclist Lance Armstrong at his Crawford ranch,
to meet with the war protester Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in
Iraq.
“I had finally come to the conclusion that maybe all these
things along do add up,” he said. “That it’s not
the same, it’s not the person I thought.”
He said that during his work on the 2006 re-election campaign of
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, which had a bipartisan
appeal, he began to rethink his approach to elections.
“I think we should design campaigns that appeal not to 51
percent of the people,” he said, “but bring the country
together as a whole.”
He said that he still believed campaigns must do what it takes
to win, but that he was never comfortable with the most hard-charging
tactics. He is now calling for “gentleness” in politics.
He said that while he tried to keep his own conduct respectful during
political combat, he wanted to “do my part in fixing fissures
that I may have been part of.”
His views against the war began to harden last spring when, in
a personal exercise, he wrote a draft opinion article and found
himself agreeing with Mr. Kerry’s call for withdrawal from
Iraq. He acknowledged that the expected deployment of his son Daniel
was an important factor.
He said the president’s announcement last fall that he was
re-nominating the former United Nations ambassador John R. Bolton,
whose confirmation Democrats had already refused, was further proof
to him that Mr. Bush was not seeking consensus with Democrats.
He said he came to believe Mr. Bush’s views were hardening,
with the reinforcement of his inner circle. But, he said, the person
“who is ultimately responsible is the president.” And
he gradually ventured out with criticism, going so far as declaring
last month in a short essay in Texas Monthly magazine that Mr. Bush
was losing “his gut-level bond with the American people,”
and breaking more fully in this week’s interview.
“If the American public says they’re done with something,
our leaders have to understand what they want,” Mr. Dowd said.
“They’re saying, ‘Get out of Iraq.’ ”
Mr. Dowd’s friends from Mr. Bush’s orbit said they
understood his need to speak out. “Everyone is going to reflect
on the good and the bad, and everything in between, in their own
way,” said Nicolle Wallace, communications director of Mr.
Bush’s 2004 campaign, a post she also held at the White House
until last summer. “And I certainly respect the way he’s
doing it — these are his true thoughts from a deeply personal
place.” Ms. Wallace said she continued to have “enormous
gratitude” for her years with Mr. Bush.
Mr. Bartlett, the White House counselor, said he understood, too,
though he said he strongly disagreed with Mr. Dowd’s assessment.
“Do we know our critics will try to use this to their advantage?
Yes,” he said. “Is that perfect? No. But you can respectfully
disagree with someone who has been supportive of you.”
Mr. Dowd does not seem prepared to put his views to work in 2008.
The only candidate who appeals to him, he said, is Senator Barack
Obama, Democrat of Illinois, because of what Mr. Dowd called his
message of unity. But, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised
if I wasn’t walking around in Africa or South America doing
something that was like mission work.”
He added, “I do feel a calling of trying to re-establish
a level of gentleness in the world.”
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
