Karl Rove

When you look at the Karl Rove story using the Toolbox (see Reading Media here), a couple of realities stand out.

Both Conflict and Proximity score 10s for this story, about Rove’s participation, to whatever extent, in the “outing” of an American citizen as a C.I.A. operative.

There are a couple of kinds of conflict present. First, there is the apparent conflict, as reported in the media, of so-called dirty-tricks tactics the Bush administration is willing to use to damage the reputations of its political enemies. Frank Rich wrote a long commentary about this in the Sunday New York Times.

The public is drawn to this conflict because it either wants to believe, or refuses to believe, that the Bush administration at the very highest level could play dirty tricks against Americans and then cover it up, a la Watergate.

The conflict between those two opinions is the real conflict in the story, and its value is in its effect on the Sixth News Value, Proximity. Ordinary citizens on both side of the conflict, who may have otherwise spent this time minding their own business, are galvanized toward their constituencies, either pro- or anti-Bush administration. This is a story to which they will pay attention.

That attention, of course, jacks up the Fifth Value, Prominence. Karl Rove is in the spotlight and not the background, and he is much more recognizable (all the headlines and photos with the president) and famous than he was a week ago. Citizens a week ago who were only marginally aware of Karl Rove this week are calling him a heathen (from the left) and a hero (from the right).

And so conflict has turned Rove into a minor celebrity, a name in his own right. The ordinary people now shouting Rove’s name may not understand why they are shouting like this, all of a sudden, but Karl Rove does. His mastery of the Toolbox has been an essential strength of George W. Bush’s political life.

This is not to say Rove set this C.I.A. story up. It is, however, interesting to note that last week he apparently waived his right to reporter-source confidentiality, allowing the Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper to avoid jail and practically assuring that his – Rove’s – name would enter the public debate.

Rove, knowing the Toolbox, would recognize his new “fame” immediately as a story he wishes he had set up. It reads almost like pre-publicity for someone about to leave government and publish a book, or a manifesto, and Rove isn’t just someone. President Bush calls him “the architect” of his re-election. His Toolbox-driven designs are no longer useful to a president no longer eligible for re-election, but they would be most useful in designing a purpose for Americans to elect a Bush Republican in 2008.

That work would best be done outside the White House. He could simply resign, as John Ashcroft and others have, and that would make some news, but not much. Much better that he leave with new prominence, courtesy of Matthew Cooper, that will draw attention to him, and thus his new Election 2008 project. Movie stars use the Toolbox in this way all the time, the latest being Tom Cruise.

If Rove decided on that marketing strategy, the Toolbox has positioned him to resign at any time. To even the casual left, he has new and better fame as a manipulator who “got caught.” To even the casual right, he has new and better fame, and credibility, as a martyr to a cause. The most beautiful result is that both sides are absolutely right.