Paths of Glory (ou o maquiavélico Rove)

(...) We woke up to a Bush victory, an event of historic importance. The circumstances of George W. Bush’s 2000 triumph, won with a minority of the vote and secured through a probably illegal Supreme Court decision, conferred a doubtful legitimacy on his first term of office. This time George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been granted an unequivocal mandate from the American people to carry out whatever policies they like.

(...) Most of the credit for this election victory goes not to the President but to Karl Rove, the Republican strategist known as Bush’s Brain. This sinister and unappealing individual met George W. Bush 25 years ago, spotted something everyone else had missed, and guided his unlikely protégé first to the Texas governorship, then to the White House and now to this famous second victory. It is a staggering achievement, and all British politicians will study Rove’s techniques with intense interest. This brilliant man has reversed the laws of political campaigning. Until Rove, conventional wisdom held that the key to victory lay with the suburban, white, middle-class voter. This was indeed the secret of Bill Clinton’s stunning victory of 1992, then copied by Tony Blair and his campaign strategist Philip Gould in 1997. Rove won this week’s election by rejecting this theory. He mobilised the Republican base, as I witnessed when travelling round the key swing states, above all Ohio, while making a film for Channel 4 in the weeks before the election. (...)

Peter Oborne, The Spectator, 6/11/2004

[João Silva]