Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Karl Rove

2007-10-18T18:50:22Z

Eagle:

[[Image:Karl Rove.jpg|right|thumb]]
'''Karl Rove''' (born December 25, 1950) is the [[Deputy Chief of Staff]] in the [[Bush administration]]. Rove's longtime partnership with [[George W. Bush]] dates back to Bush's terms as [[governor]] of [[Texas]]. Rove ran both of Bush's campaigns for governor and for president.

Rove's track to the top began early after attending the University of [[Utah]] to work in the [[College Republican National Committee]]. Congressional Democrats are interested in any advice he may given prior to the dispatch of several controversial US Attorneys serving at the pleasure of the President.

Often called "the brains behind Bush" or "the Architect", Rove and his mudslinging (such as the "John Mccain's black baby" story) are credited as the chief architect and ideas of the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.

===Resignation===

On August 13, 2007, the [[Wall Street Journal]] published an interview with Rove in which he announced that he would be resigning from his position of deputy Chief of Staff at the end of the month.<ref>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118698747711695773.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news</ref> Rove explained the move as motivated by his dedication to his family. {{DEFAULTSORT: Rove, Karl}}

==References==
<references/>
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rove, Karl}}
[[category:Political people]]

Salmon

2007-10-18T18:48:20Z

Eagle:

A salmon is type of fish used in many dishes, and commonly in sushi. They are distingished by their unique migratory and breeding tendencies. Salmon have the miraculous ability to find the original stream where they were born after swimming around for years in the ocean, and returning there to breed.

<Endangerment>
Due to many factors, including water pollution and overfishing, salmon are endangered in some areas. However, Dick Cheney allowed potentialy dangerous water to flow through rivers in Oregon as opposed to holding it and examining it in 2002. As a result, more than 10,000 salmon were rotting, dead, on Oregon river banks. This was stated in an article by the Washington Post in an article about the vice president in June 2007.

Constitution

2007-10-18T18:47:45Z

Eagle:

''For the article on the United States Constitution, go to [[United States Constitution]]''

A '''constitution''' is a system of managing a nation's government, that usually spells out how th<math>e</math><math> <s><s>Strike-through text</s></s>
----
Insert formula here
----
--~~~~<math>{{Insert formula here}}span</math></math> government is to be structured and the rules the government must follow. A constitution is usually written, but not always.

Alternatively, a constitution is the fundamental law of a nation or state which establishes the character and basic principles of the government.
[[category:legal terms]]
[[category:politics]]
[[[Link title]
== [[Image:Headline text]][[Media:<nowiki>Example.ogg</nowiki>
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Tony Blair

2007-10-18T18:45:20Z

Eagle:

{{Prime Minister
|image=Tblair.jpg
|seq=73
|term_start=May 2 1997
|term_end=June 24 2007
|previous=John Major
|party=Labour Party
|next=Gordon Brown
|birth_date=May 6 1953
|birth_place=Edinburgh
|death_date=
|death_place=
|spouse=[[Cherie Blair|Cherie Booth]]
|spouse2=
|religion=[[Church of England]]
}}
'''Tony Blair''', full name '''Anthony Charles Lynton Blair''' (born May 6, 1953) is a former [[Prime Minister]] of the [[United Kingdom]]. The [[Labour Party]]'s longest-serving Prime Minister, he served from May 2, 1997 to June 27, 2007. Blair is also the only person to have led the Labour Party to three consecutive general election victories, and the only Labour Prime Minister to serve more than one full consecutive term.

He was elected to the Labour Party leadership in 1994 following the death of his predecessor, John Smith. As well as being leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister, Blair also served as the [[MP]] for Sedgefield, a constituency in [[County Durham]] in North East England.

While the Labour Party is a self-described "democratic [[socialist]] party"<ref>[http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php?id=labourdemocracy]</ref>, Blair coined the phrase "[[New Labour]]" to distinguish his own pro-[[business]] policies from the more [[collectivist]] platform of his predecessors. He also used the phrase "[[The Third Way]]". He was criticized by some more left-wing members of the Labour Party for "selling out" to conservative thinking, particularly in his support for the [[United States]] in the [[Iraq War]]. On the other hand, Blair's policies were decidedly [[liberal]] by American standards: they have included increases in taxation, increases in government spending (particularly on public schools and Britain's [[National Health Service|socialized healthcare system]]), the introduction of an increased minimum wage, and support for the [[homosexual agenda]].

== Personal ==
[http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page4.asp] The son of a barrister and lecturer Leo Blair, Tony Blair was born in [[Edinburgh]], but spent most of his childhood in Durham. At the age of 14 he returned to Edinburgh to finish his education at Fettes College. Blair was known as a cheeky, rebellious, and argumentative schoolboy, and at 17 he was threatened with expulsion for persistently breaking school rules.<ref name="bbc">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6506365.stm BBC News | UK | UK Politics | The Tony Blair Story]</ref>. After leaving Fettes with three A levels he studied law at [[Oxford University]], and went on to become a barrister (Lincoln's Inn) himself, before entering politics. Blair married his wife, Cherie Booth QC a barrister and daughter of the actor Tony Booth, in 1980, and they have four children. Cherie hails from [[Liverpool]].

Blair is a competent guitar player and at university was a member of a rock band called Ugly Rumours. His favourite music includes [[The Beatles]], [[The Rolling Stones]], [[Led Zeppelin]], [[Free (band)|Free]], [[Bruce Springsteen]], [[U2]], [[Coldplay]], [[The Foo Fighters]], and [[Simply Red]].<ref name="bbc" />

While Blair rarely discusses his religious faith in public, he is a convinced Christian, a fact for which he is often criticised or mocked by British commentators. His wife, Cherie, is a Catholic; he has attended Catholic Masses, and it is thought that he may himself be sympathetic to Catholicism, though he is a member of the [[Church of England]].

==Blair's political career==

A combination of the Labour Party's new-found moderation, Blair's personal popularity and the deep unpopularity of the Conservatives under [[John Major]] resulted in a landslide victory for Blair and his party in the 1997 general [[election]], ending 18 years of [[Conservative]] government. Labour easily won re-election in 2001 and in 2005, although with losses.

Blair became the first active prime minister to be interviewed in a police investigation, in December 2006<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6292033.stm BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Honours police quizzed McConnell]</ref> and again in January 2007<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6320399.stm BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair interviewed again by police]</ref>, over allegations he had illegally ''nominated'' donors to the Labour Party for peerages - the so called "Cash for Honours" scandal. The government stressed that he was being interviewed only as a witness however, and the nominations of the money lenders were rejected by the independent appointments' commission.<ref name="bbc" /> However the allegations were a popular story in the media, and dogged his final months in office.
Tony Blair was superseded by [[Gordon Brown]] as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in June 2007.

==Blair's policies==

During Blair's tenure as Prime Minister, the [[Labour party|Labour]] government made the Bank of England independent, allowing them to set the nation's interest rates (which had previously been set by the Chancellor of the Exchequer), and has introduced a national [[minimum wage]], in 1998, which has gradually been increased over time. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have gained their own legislatures, and limited attempts have been made to devolve power to the regions of England (although these have not been successful). Blair's government has also banned fox-hunting and cigarette smoking in public places.

One of the most controversial aspects of Blair's premiership was been his commitment to and support of the Iraq war, which strongly divided opinion, both in the House and among the British people. His strong support of America and President [[George W. Bush]] in particular have set him apart from most European leaders, especially with the parties of the left (including his own Labour Party). This came at considerable political cost with his own popularity suffering greatly, and the Government may have lost considerable support in the 2005 general election as a result.

==Blair and the media==

In the 1990s in particular, Blair was seen as a charismatic leader, with formidable media performing skills. His most famous television appearance was his tribute to [[Diana, Princess of Wales]] on the morning after her death in August 1997, in which he described her as "the People's Princess" and "the Queen of Hearts". Blair has, however, acquired a reputation for excessive news management, and even for dishonesty, particularly after the Iraq War. Bushes bitch

==See also==

* [[British politics]]
* [[Labour Party]]

==References==
<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blair, Tony}}
[[Category:United Kingdom Prime Ministers]]

Jenna Bush

2007-10-18T18:43:25Z

Eagle:

'''Jenna Bush''' is the daughter of President [[George W. Bush]]. She has a cocaine addiction, and has admitted it.

{{DEFAULTSORT: Bush, Jenna}}
[[category:biographies]]

Condoleezza Rice

2007-10-16T02:13:19Z

Eagle:

[[Image:Bncjcfjuh.jpg|right|thumb|Condoleeza Rice]]
Early life and education
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in the neighborhood of Titusville. She is the only child of Presbyterian minister Reverend John Wesley Rice, Jr., and his wife, Angelena Ray. Reverend Rice was a guidance counselor at Ullman High School and minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by his father. Angelena was a science, music, and oratory teacher at Ullman.[2]

Condoleezza (whose name is derived from the Italian musical expression, Con dolcezza, which means "with sweetness"[3]) experienced firsthand the injustices of Birmingham's discriminatory laws and attitudes. She was instructed to walk proudly in public and to use the facilities at home rather than subject herself to the indignity of "colored" facilities in town. As Rice recalls of her parents and their peers, "they refused to allow the limits and injustices of their time to limit our horizons."[4]

However, Rice recalls various times in which she suffered discrimination on account of her race, which included being relegated to a storage room at a department store instead of a regular dressing room, being barred from going to the circus or the local amusement park, being denied hotel rooms, and even being given bad food at restaurants.[3] Also, while Condoleezza was mostly kept by her parents from areas where she might face discrimination, she was very aware of the civil rights struggle and the problems of Jim Crow Birmingham. A neighbor, Juliemma Smith, described how "[Condi] used to call me and say things like, 'Did you see what Bull Connor did today?' She was just a little girl and she did that all the time. I would have to read the newspaper thoroughly because I wouldn’t know what she was going to talk about."[3] Rice herself said of the segregation era: "Those terrible events burned into my consciousness. I missed many days at my segregated school because of the frequent bomb threats."[3]

During the violent days of the Civil Rights Movement, Reverend Rice armed himself and kept guard over the house while Condoleezza practiced the piano inside. According to J.L. Chestnut, Reverend Rice called local civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth and his followers "uneducated, misguided Negroes."[5][6] Also, Reverend Rice instilled in his daughter and students that black people would have to prove themselves worthy of advancement, and would simply have to be "twice as good" to overcome injustices built into the system.[7] Rice said “My parents were very strategic, I was going to be so well prepared, and I was going to do all of these things that were revered in white society so well, that I would be armored somehow from racism. I would be able to confront white society on its own terms.”[8] While the Rices supported the goals of the civil rights movement, they did not agree with the idea of putting their child in harm's way.[3]

Rice was eight when her schoolmate Denise McNair, aged 11, was killed in the bombing of the primarily African American Sixteenth Street Baptist Church by white supremacists on September 15, 1963. Rice has commented upon that moment in her life:

I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed.[9]

– Condoleezza Rice, Commencement 2004, Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004

Rice states that growing up during racial segregation taught her determination against adversity, and the need to be "twice as good" as non-minorities.[10] Segregation also hardened her stance on the right to bear arms; Rice has said in interviews that if gun registration had been mandatory, her father's weapons would have been confiscated, leaving them defenseless against Ku Klux Klan nightriders.[3]

Condoleezza Rice as an undergraduate student at the University of DenverRice started learning French, music, figure skating and ballet at age three.[11] At age 15, she began classes with the goal of becoming a concert pianist. Her plans changed when she realized that she did not play well enough to support herself through music alone.[12] While Rice is not a professional pianist, she still practices often and plays with a chamber music group. Rice made use of her pianist training to accompany cellist Yo-Yo Ma for Brahms's Violin Sonata in D Minor at Constitution Hall in April 2002 for the National Medal of Arts Awards.[13]

In 1967, the family moved to Denver, Colorado. She attended St. Mary's Academy, a private all-girls Catholic high school in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado. After studying piano at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Rice enrolled at the University of Denver, where her father both served as an assistant dean and taught a class called "The Black Experience in America." Dean John Rice opposed institutional racism, government oppression, and the Vietnam War.

Rice attended a course on international politics taught by Josef Korbel, the father of future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This experience sparked her interest in the Soviet Union and international relations and made her call Korbel "one of the most central figures in my life."[14]

Rice graduated from St. Mary's Academy in 1970. In 1974, at age 19, Rice earned her B.A. in political science, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver. In 1975, she obtained her Master's Degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame. She first worked in the State Department in 1977, during the Carter administration, as an intern in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. In 1981, at the age of 26, she received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate School of International Studies at Denver. Her dissertation along with some of her earliest publications, centered on military policy and politics in Czechoslovakia.[15]

Rice was a Democrat until 1982 when she changed her political affiliation to Republican after growing averse to former President Carter's foreign policy.[16] She also cited influence from her father, John Wesley, in this decision, who himself switched from Democrat to Republican after being denied voting registration by the Democratic registrar. In her words to the 2000 Republican National Convention, "My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did."[17] In addition to English, she speaks, with varying degrees of fluency, Russian, German, French, and Spanish.[18]

Academic career

Condoleezza Rice during a 2005 interview on ITV in LondonRice was hired by Stanford University as an Assistant Professor in Political Science (1981–1987). She was granted tenure and promoted, first to Associate Professor (1987–1993), and then to Provost, the chief budget and academic officer of the university (1993–1999), and full Professor (1993–present).[19] Rice was the first female, first minority, and youngest Provost at Stanford.[20] She was also named a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. She was a specialist on the former Soviet Union and gave lectures on the subject for the Berkeley-Stanford joint program led by UC Berkeley Professor George Breslauer in the mid-1980s.

Provost promotion
Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper said the university was "most fortunate in persuading someone of Professor Rice's exceptional talents and proven ability in critical situations to take on this task. Everything she has done, she has done well; I have every confidence that she will continue that record as provost."[21] Rice’s Stanford appointment was considered, by Casper, an effort to address concerns about alleged bias at Stanford University.[citation needed] Casper told the New Yorker in 2002 that it “would be disingenuous for me to say that the fact that she was a woman, the fact that she was black … weren't in my mind."

Balancing school budget
As Stanford's Provost, Rice was responsible for managing the university's multi-billion dollar budget. The school at that time was running a deficit of $20 million. When Rice took office, she promised that the budget deficit would be balanced within "two years." Coit Blacker, Stanford's deputy director of the Institute for International Studies, said there "was a sort of conventional wisdom that said it couldn't be done ... that [the deficit] was structural, that we just had to live with it." Two years later, Rice announced that the deficit been eliminated and the university was holding a record surplus of over $14.5 million.[22]

Special interest issues
Rice drew protests when, as provost, she departed from the practice of applying affirmative action to tenure decisions and unsuccessfully sought to consolidate the university's ethnic community centers.[23]

Private sector
Rice headed Chevron's committee on public policy until she resigned on January 15, 2001, to become National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. Chevron honored Rice by naming an oil tanker Condoleezza Rice after her, but controversy led to its being renamed Altair Voyager.[24]

She also served on the board of directors for the Carnegie Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the Chevron Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Rand Corporation, the Transamerica Corporation, and other organizations.

In 1992 Rice founded the Center for New Generation, an after-school program created to raise the high school graduation numbers of East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park, California.[25]

Early political career
In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

From 1989 through March 1991 (the period of the fall of Berlin Wall and the final days of the Soviet Union), she served in President George H.W. Bush's administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In this position, Rice helped develop Bush's and Secretary of State James Baker's policies in favor of German reunification. She impressed Bush, who later introduced her to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as the one who "tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union."[26]

In 1991, Rice returned to her teaching position at Stanford, although she continued to serve as a consultant on the former Soviet Bloc for numerous clients in both the public and private sectors. Late that year, California Governor Pete Wilson appointed her to a bipartisan committee that had been formed to draw new state legislative and congressional districts in the state.

In 1997, she sat on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training in the Military.

During George W. Bush's 2000 U.S. Presidential election campaign, Rice took a one-year leave of absence from Stanford University to help work as his foreign policy advisor. The group of advisors she led called itself The Vulcans in honor of the monumental Vulcan statue, which sits on a hill overlooking her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Rice would later go on to give a noteworthy speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention. The speech asserted that “…America's armed forces are not a global police force. They are not the world's 911.”[27][28]

National Security Advisor (2001–2005)

Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listen to President George W. Bush speak about the Middle East on June 24, 2002On December 17, 2000, Rice was picked to serve as National Security Advisor and stepped down from her position at Stanford. She was the first woman to occupy the post. Rice earned the nickname of “Warrior Princess,” reflecting strong nerve and delicate manners.[29]

During the summer of 2001, Rice met with CIA Director George Tenet on an almost daily basis to discuss the possibilities and prevention of terrorist attacks on American targets. Notably, on July 10, 2001, Rice met with Tenet in what he referred to as an "emergency meeting"[30] held at the White House at Tenet's request to brief Rice and the NSC staff about the potential threat of an al Qaeda attack. Rice responded by asking Tenet to give a presentation on the matter to Secretary Rumsfeld and (now-former) Attorney General John Ashcroft.[31]

When asked about the meeting in 2006, Rice asserted she did not recall the specific meeting, commenting that she had met repeatedly with Tenet that summer about terrorist threats. Moreover, she stated that it was "incomprehensible” to her that she ignored terrorist threats two months before the September 11 attacks.[32]

Rice was an outspoken proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After Iraq delivered its declaration of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations on December 8, 2002, Rice wrote an editorial for The New York Times entitled Why We Know Iraq Is Lying.[33]

In March 2004, Rice declined to testify before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission). The White House claimed executive privilege under constitutional separation of powers and cited past tradition. Under pressure, Bush agreed to allow her to testify[34] so long as it did not create a precedent of Presidential staff being required to appear before United States Congress when so requested. Her appearance before the commission on April 8, 2004, was accepted by the Bush administration in part because she was not appearing directly before Congress. She thus became the first sitting National Security Advisor to testify on matters of policy. In April 2007, Rice rejected, on grounds of executive privilege, a House subpoena regarding the prewar claim that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger.[35]

Leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, Rice became the first National Security Advisor to campaign for an incumbent president. She stated that while: "Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the actual attacks on America, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a part of the Middle East that was festering and unstable, [and] was part of the circumstances that created the problem on September 11."[36]

On January 18, 2003, the Washington Post reported that Rice was involved in crafting Bush's position on race-based preferences. Rice has stated that "while race-neutral means are preferable," race can be taken into account as "one factor among others" in university admissions policies.[37]

In a January 10, 2003 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Rice made headlines by stating regarding Iraqi WMD: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."[38]

After the invasion, when Iraq turned out to have no WMD capability, critics called Rice's claims a "hoax," "deception" and "demagogic scare tactic."[39][40] "Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false," wrote Dana Milbank and Mike Allen in the Washington Post[41]

Rice characterized the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief, “Bin Laden to Strike in US" historical information. Rice indicated “It was information based on old reporting.”[42] Sean Wilentz of Salon magazine suggested that the PDB contained current information based on continuing investigations, including that Bin Laden wanted to “bring the fighting to America".[43]

Secretary of State (2005–present)

Rice speaks after being nominated to be Secretary of State by President George W. BushOn November 16, 2004, Bush nominated Rice to be Secretary of State. On January 26, 2005, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 85–13. The negative votes, the most cast against any nomination for Secretary of State since 1825, came from Senators who, according to Boxer, wanted "to hold Dr. Rice and the Bush administration accountable for their failures in Iraq and in the war on terrorism." Their reasoning was that Rice had acted irresponsibly in equating Hussein's regime with Islamist terrorism and some could not accept her previous record. Senator Robert Byrd voted against Rice’s appointment, indicating that she “has asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him.”[44]

Rice signs official papers after receiving the oath of office during her ceremonial swearing in at the Department of State. Watching on are, from left, Laura Bush, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President George W. Bush and an unidentified family memberOn October 30, 2005, Rice attended a memorial service in Montgomery, Alabama, in Rice's home state, for Rosa Parks, an inspiration for the American Civil Rights Movement. Rice stated, that she and others who grew up in Alabama during the height of Parks' activism might not have realized her impact on their lives at the time, "but I can honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as secretary of state."[45]

As of September 21, 2007 Secretary Rice has visited sixty-five countries with a total 658,284 miles and 1385.51 hours (57.73 days) of time.[46]

On October 1, 2007, Rice told children (at New York's Public School No. 154, the Harriet Tubman Learning Center) that she would not run for president, slept for 6 1/2 hours a night and was not afraid of war zones. Asked how it felt "to be a lady with such a powerful job", she said: "Sometimes you don't feel all that powerful." Rangel teasingly suggested Rice aim for the White House.[47]

Major initiatives
As Secretary of State, Rice has championed the expansion of democratic governments. Rice stated that 9/11 was rooted in “oppression and despair” and so, the U.S. must advance democratic reform and support basic rights throughout the greater Middle East.[48] Rice has also reformed and restructured the department, as well as U.S. diplomacy as a whole. "Transformational Diplomacy" is the goal which Rice describes as "work[ing] with our many partners around the world ... [and] build[ing] and sustain[ing] democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system."[49]

Rice's Transformational Diplomacy involves five core elements:

Relocating American diplomats to the places in the world where they are needed most, such as China, India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, and Lebanon.
Requiring diplomats to serve some time in hardship locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Angola; gain expertise in at least two regions; and become fluent in two foreign languages, such as Chinese, Arabic, or Urdu.
Focusing on regional solutions to problems like terrorism, drug trafficking, and diseases.
Working with other countries on a bilateral basis to help them build a stronger infrastructure, and decreasing foreign nations' dependence on American hand-outs and assistance.
Creating a high-level position, Director of Foreign Assistance, to oversee U.S. foreign aid, thus de-fragmenting U.S. foreign assistance.
Rice said that these moves were needed to help "maintain security, fight poverty, and make democratic reforms" in these countries and would help improve foreign nations' legal, economic, healthcare, and educational systems.[49] [50]

Another aspect of Transformational Diplomacy is the emphasis on finding regional solutions. Rice also pressed for finding transnational solutions as well, stating that "in the 21st century, geographic regions are growing ever more integrated economically, politically and culturally. This creates new opportunities but it also presents new challenges, especially from transnational threats like terrorism and weapons proliferation and drug smuggling and trafficking in persons and disease."[49]

Rice unveils her plan for restructuring American foreign policy, which she calls "Transformational Diplomacy," during a January 18, 2006 speech at Georgetown UniversityAnother aspect of the emphasis on regional solutions is the implementation of small, agile, "rapid-response" teams to tackle problems like disease, instead of the traditional approach of calling on experts in an embassy. Rice explained that this means moving diplomats out of the "back rooms of foreign ministries" and putting more effort into "localizing" the State Department's diplomatic posture in foreign nations. The Secretary emphasized the need for diplomats to move into the largely unreached "bustling new population centers" and to spread out "more widely across countries" in order to become more familiar with local issues and people.[49]

Rice restructured U.S. foreign assistance, naming Randall L. Tobias, an AIDS relief expert, as administrator of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development). Tobias, as a deputy secretary of state, had the job of focusing foreign assistance efforts and de-fragmenting the disparate aid offices to improve effectiveness and efficiency.[51]

Rice says these initiatives are necessary because of the highly "extraordinary time" in which Americans live. She compares the moves to the historic initiatives taken after World War II, which she claims helped stabilize Europe as it is known today. Rice states that her Transformational Diplomacy is not merely about "influencing" or "reporting on" governments, but "changing people's lives" through tackling the issues like AIDS, the education of women, and the defeat of violent extremism.[49]

In early 2007, Rice indicated that State Department employees were volunteering in large numbers, yet Defense Secretary Gates expressed concerns regarding a request from Rice that military personnel fill jobs in Iraq that are the responsibility of the State Department.[52]

Rice meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a trilateral meeting in Jerusalem, Feb 2007
Regional issues

Gaza withdrawal
Rice worked to persuade Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories and free up commerce and travel between the two areas. During the summer of 2005, Rice encouraged Israeli leadership to withdraw from settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. Rice spent April 2005 raising support among Arab leaders.[53] In July, she visited the region to "help bring the weight of the United States" to the discussions.[54] In September, Rice hailed the successful withdrawal as a victory for both Israel and Palestine, saying, "This is an historic moment for both sides, and the commitment of both sides to a successful disengagement process has been impressive."[55] Gaza is now under Palestinian control once again. However, Palestinians complained that they were not able to travel through border crossings in and out of Gaza, which had stifled commerce.[54]

Border Crossings Deal

Rice announces brokering of the deal to open Gaza border crossings after a sleepless 48-hour negotiationIn November 2005, Rice renegotiated an opening of the Gaza border crossings.[56] Secretary Rice extended her visit to Jerusalem for a mediation session November 14, meeting alternately with Israel and Palestinian delegations. Rice negotiated differences between Israel and Palestine that included a proposed blacklist of Palestinians that had been detained by Israel and a concern that future violence would induce a renewed closure of the border crossings. By November 15, Rice announced an agreement to open Gaza's borders, with a system of transportation between Gaza and the West Bank, defining operations for transporting cargo and people across the border and allowing Gaza to reopen its international airport and begin work on a seaport. This included the Rafah border crossing, Palestine's only land link to a country other than Israel. It also included monitoring of the crossings by officials from the European Union.[57]

Gideon Levy, reporter for an Israeli newspaper, complained Rice had accomplished little: "in what was considered the "achievement" of the current visit, Israel also promised to open the Karni crossing. Karni will be open, one can assume, only slightly more than the "safe passage," which never opened following the previous futile visit."[58]

Hamas, Palestinian elections

Map showing electoral districts and areas of formal Palestinian control (green)Rice pushed for peaceful, democratic elections in Palestine following the death of Yasser Arafat. Rice asserted that "there should be the ability of Palestinian people to participate in the elections" and claimed that democratic elections would represent "a key step in the process of building a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state." Rice, alluding to the U.S.-labeled terrorist organization Hamas, stated that "there should be no place in the political process for groups or individuals who refuse to renounce terror and violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and disarm," saying, "You cannot have one foot in politics and the other foot in terror."[59]

Rice persuaded a reluctant Israel to allow Israeli Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote in the Palestinian Authority elections. Israel allowed Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote in the January 25, 2006 parliamentary elections, while banning Hamas, which officially calls for Israel's destruction, from campaigning there. Rice lauded the turnout and congratulated President Abbas, while informing the victorious Hamas that it would "have to make some difficult choices," saying, "Those who win elections have an obligation to govern democratically. … It now inherits the obligations of a Palestinian government, authority, that go back now for more than a decade to recognize the right of Israel to exist, to renounce violence, to disarm militias, as is the case in the roadmap, and to find a peaceful solution in two states."[60]

In response to the Hamas victory, Israel withheld funds belonging to the Palestinian Authority, and reinforced restrictions on movement in and out of the Gaza Strip and within the West Bank. Rice stated: “Clearly, [Hamas] cannot govern in a circumstance in which they cannot represent a responsible government before the international system.” Rice told her Israeli counterpart that “the economic boycott on the Hamas-led Palestinian government is effective and in the international community will continue to maintain the boycott.”[61]

George Soros faulted Rice for refusing to deal with Hamas. "[N]o progress is possible as long as the Bush administration and the Ehud Olmert government persist in their current position of refusing to recognize a unity government that includes Hamas. The recent meeting between Condoleezza Rice, Abbas, and Olmert turned into an empty formality," said Soros. This was playing into the hands of the hard-liners in Hamas, increasing the influence of Syria and Iran, and would escalate the fighting, Soros said.[62]

Immediately following Hamas' victory in the elections, Rice attempted to garner international support in demanding that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist. By April, Hamas officials appeared to publicly state that they are willing to work toward recognizing Israel. Under their terms, Israel would have to fully withdraw from disputed territories, including Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.[63] Many saw this as a positive starting point for negotiations that would allow the "roadmap" process to continue. The statement was verified by Hamas leaders such as Mohammed Ghazal, a Hamas militia official, who stated that Hamas may be willing to amend its charter to recognize Israel, saying, "The charter is not the Quran." Ghazal went on to state that while he agreed with Hamas' positions, "we’re talking now about reality, about political solutions … The realities are different."[64]

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

Rice delivers a special briefing on Middle East Peace in the State Department Briefing Room, July 21, 2006In mid-July 2006, the Middle East peace process encountered a new obstacle on a different front when Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon launched rocket attacks into Israel and ambushed Israeli convoys, kidnapping two soldiers and killing three, sparking what has become known as the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. Rice immediately condemned the act, calling Hezbollah a "terrorist organization" and saying that the action "undermines regional stability and goes against the interests of both the Israeli and Lebanese people," specifically calling on Syria to "use its influence to support a positive outcome."[65] That day, Rice was one of the first to speak directly to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni concerning the incident. Israel initiated aerial bombardments against Lebanon on July 13 and sent in land troops on July 23 to take out rocket launching sites that were shelling Northern Israeli cities, as well as to look for and recover the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers.

During the conflict, Rice supported Israel's right to defend itself from Hezbollah attacks, she repeatedly cautioned Israel to be responsible in minimizing collateral damage. Before the major fighting began, Rice demanded that both Israel and Lebanon "act with restraint to resolve this incident peacefully and to protect innocent life and civilian infrastructure." She also continued to pressure Syria to take a more active positive role throughout the crisis, accusing Syria of "sheltering the people who have been perpetrating these acts" and calling on it "to act responsibly and stop the use of its territory for these kinds of activities[,] to bring all pressure on those that it is harbouring to stop this and to return these soldiers and to allow the situation to be de-escalated."[66]

Rice, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi work to lay the foundation for Resolution 1701, which ultimately imposed a ceasefire on the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflictWhen Rice arrived in the Middle East in July 2006, one of her first moves was an unannounced visit to Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora to praise Siniora's "courage and steadfastness" and show U.S. support for the Lebanese people.[67] Rice stated that the conflict was part of "the birth pangs of a new Middle East," stating that Israel, Lebanon, and the international community had to "be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one."[68]

At a time when progress appeared possible in the region, the Israeli military launched an airstrike on a suspected Hezbollah hideout in Qana, Lebanon, that killed 20–60 civilians. The airstrike seemed to sour support for Israel's endeavor and Lebanon cancelled a visit by Rice as a result.[69] While the tragedy was a setback in the negotiation process, it seemed to be a turning point for Israel, who, afterward, began taking a path toward a cease-fire. Before Rice left the region on July 27, she was able to negotiate a 48-hour halt on Israeli air-raids.

Rice appears with former UN Secretary General Annan to announce the successful passage of Resolution 1701, which imposed a ceasefire on the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflictRice returned to the Mideast on July 29, where the outlines of the ceasefire to come began to take shape. Rice demanded that the global community do what it could to ensure that the Mideast region would never again return to the "status quo ante." Rice saw the situation as an opportunity to create a new environment in which Israel and Lebanon could live in peace, and in which Lebanon could have full control over all its territories without Hezbollah acting as a "state within a state," being able to launch terrorist attacks on Israel. Building on the two resolutions that came out of the G8 Conference and the steps that had been taken at the conference in Rome, Italy in late July, Rice worked with other leaders at the United Nations to pass UN Security Council Resolution 1701 on August 11, 2006, which sought to resolve the crisis. The ceasefire went into effect on August 14. The ceasefire that Rice helped broker provided for a full cessation of hostilities, a Lebanese-led international force to take the place of the Israeli forces, the disarmament of Hezbollah, full control of the Lebanese government to Lebanon, and an absence of paramilitary forces (including and implying Hezbollah) south of the Litani River; it also emphasizes the need for the immediate release of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Rice lauded the outcome and expressed pleasure that the hostilities in the area had been brought to an end. Though there were sporadic, but small, spurts of violence after the ceasefire took effect, it has ultimately sustained, while international peacekeeping forces began to replace Israeli forces. On October 2, 2006, the last Israeli forces were withdrawn, allowing the UN and the Lebanese military to take over.[70]

She had a 30-minute meeting with Walid Muallem, her Syrian counterpart on May 3, 2007 – the first such talks at this level since 2005.[71]

Egypt
In February 2005, Rice abruptly postponed a visit to Egypt, reflecting displeasure at the jailing of a leading opposition figure, Ayman Nour. Nour, head of the liberal Tomorrow Party, was reported to have been brutally interrogated.[72] Nour was freed by Egyptian authorities in March 2005, and began a campaign for the Egyptian presidency.[73]

In June 2005, Rice addressed democracy in the Middle East at the American University in Cairo. She stated: “There are those who say that democracy leads to chaos, or conflict, or terror. In fact, the opposite is true. … Ladies and Gentlemen: Across the Middle East today, millions of citizens are voicing their aspirations for liberty and for democracy …demanding freedom for themselves and democracy for their countries. To these courageous men and women, I say today: All free nations will stand with you as you secure the blessings of your own liberty”[74]

Nour finished second in Egypt's presidential race, held in 2005. In December 2005, Egypt imprisoned Nour on forgery charges that were disputed by human-rights groups. In February 2006, Rice visited Hosni Mubarak yet never spoke Nour's name publicly. When asked about him at a news conference, she referred to his situation as one of Egypt's setbacks. Days later, Mubarak told a government newspaper that Rice "didn't bring up difficult issues or ask to change anything."[75] Mohammed Habib, an Egyptian Brotherhood official, stated: “Hamas's victory made the U.S. take a contrary position to promoting democracy in Egypt and favor a hereditary succession.”[76]

In 2005, Egypt acknowledged that the US had transferred 60 detainees to Egypt as part of the "war on terror". In 2007, Amnesty International reported that Egypt had become an international center for interrogation and torture for other countries.[77]

The second largest recipient of U.S. Foreign Aid is Egypt, with $1.8 billion scheduled for fiscal 2006.[78] Edward Walker, former ambassador to Egypt noted "Aid offers an easy way out for Egypt to avoid reform. They use the money to support antiquated programs and to resist reforms."[79]

Rice shakes hands with former Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom in a July 2005 visit to IsraelRice has worked in the Middle East, including Israel, the Palestinian territories, and its immediate neighbors, especially Lebanon. Rice has supported Israel, defended Israel's right to protect itself, and promoted the "roadmap for peace" which includes the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. On August 29, 2006, she stated that the Middle East "should be a Middle East in which there is a Palestinian state in which Palestinians can have their own aspirations met, one that is not corrupt, one that is democratic, [and] one in which there is only one authority."[80]

Saudi Arabia
In May 2005, Rice indicated that many Mid East states would “have to answer their people's call for genuine reform. ” She said “[a]nd even Saudi Arabia has held multiple elections.”[81] In April 2007, the New York Times reported that “more than half the decisions made by the councils have not been carried out. Most of the others have been in support of the central government.”[82]

In November 2005, the State Department issued a report critical of restrictions on religion in Saudi Arabia, noting among other things that all citizens were required to be Muslims. Rice has not sanctioned Saudi Arabia, saying she wants “additional time for a continuation of discussions leading to progress on important religious freedom issues.”[83] Criticisms in the report include a 2002 incident in which Saudi religious police stopped students from leaving a burning building because they were not wearing mandated Islamic dress; 15 schoolgirls perished.[84]

Iran
Though the U.S. does not hold formal diplomatic relations with Iran, Rice has been quite entrenched in issues pertaining to Iran, especially in regards to its democratic progress and humanitarian record, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threatening statements toward Israel, and its pursuit of nuclear technology.

Rice criticized Iran's human rights record and democratic principles. On February 3, 2005, Rice said the Iranian regime's treatment of its people is "something to be loathed." She also stated: "I don't think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for either the Iranian people or for the region."[85]

In October 2005, Ahmadinejad stated that "Israel must be wiped off the map,"[86] to which Rice responded: "When the president of one country says that another country should be wiped off the face of the map, in violation of all of the norms of the United Nations, where they sit together as members, it has to be taken seriously." Rice then went on to name Iran as "probably the world's most important state sponsor of terrorism," whose people live "without freedom and without the prospect of freedom because an unelected few are denying them that."[87]

In February 2006, Rice addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and called for funding to aid democratic reform in Iran through television and radio broadcasting, through helping pay for Iranians to study in America, and through supporting pro-democracy groups within the country.[88] Senator Boxer expressed concern that the administration appeared surprised when radical Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran, when Iranian affiliated groups won a majority in Iraq, and when the militant Hamas won a majority. Rice said that the Bush administration should not be blamed for trouble areas and said that the burden was on Hamas to change.[89]

Rice joins the EU in condemning Iran's defiance of international protocol and demands Tehran halt its uranium enrichment in January 2006In recent years, Iran has also begun to pursue nuclear technology through uranium enrichment, which has been one of the most pertinent issues that Rice has dealt with during her tenure at the State Department. Iran maintains that its nuclear program only seeks to develop the capacity for peaceful civilian nuclear power generation.[90] Rice, along with other nations, has contended that Iran's record of sponsoring terrorism and threatening the safety of other nations, along with its defiance of its treaty obligations, of the United Nations Security Council, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have not proven Iran to be responsible enough to conduct uranium enrichment without outside supervision. Under Rice, the official State Department consensus on the matter is that "[t]he United States believes the Iranian people should enjoy the benefits of a truly peaceful program to use nuclear reactors to generate electric power ... [and] support[s] the Iranian people’s rights to develop nuclear energy peacefully, with proper international safeguards."[91]

On September 9, 2005, Rice declared the refusal of Iran to halt its nuclear program unacceptable and called on Russia, China and India to join in threatening United Nations sanctions, and on June 2, 2006, a committee of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, announced their plan to convince Iran to cease its nuclear activities. Rice represented the United States in the negotiation of the diplomatic initiative.[92]

On February 14, 2006, Iran restarted its uranium enrichment program despite calls from the international community not to do so. Iran's traditional foe, Iraq, offered no resistance because Iraq's leadership had been transformed to Shiite control. Rice responded by asserting that "[t]here is simply no peaceful rationale for the Iranian regime to resume uranium enrichment." Speaking on behalf of the United States and the European Union, Rice said they were "gravely concerned by Iran's long history of hiding sensitive nuclear activities from the IAEA, in violation of its obligations, its refusal to cooperate with the IAEA's investigation, its rejection of diplomatic initiatives offered by the EU and Russia and now its dangerous defiance of the entire international community."[93] In May of 2006, Rice came up with a new approach for dealing with Iran: direct negotiation between Iran and the United States (alongside their European allies) and the possibility for "a package of economic incentives and some kind of longer-term relationship with the United States" in exchange for the suspension of uranium enrichment within Iran.[94] Iran responded by saying that it will "never give up its legitimate rights, so the American preconditions are just unacceptable."[94]

On July 12, 2006, Rice, along with the foreign ministers of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, announced that, as a result of Iran's refusal to suspend their uranium enrichment program, they had agreed to seek a UN Security Council Resolution against Iran under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.[95] Article 41 gives such a resolution the power to interrupt or sever Iran's economic, transportational, telecommunicative, and diplomatic relations.[96]

Though the United States and Iran disagree on key issues, the State Department has offered aid to Iran on many different occasions.[citation needed] After a deadly earthquake struck the Iranian province of Lorestan in March of 2005, Rice offered humanitarian aid to the country during a visit to England. Rice said her "thoughts and prayers" were with the victims.[97]

Rice said on April 30, 2007 that she does not rule out talks with her Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.[98] On May 3, 2007, Rice "exchanged pleasantries" with Mottaki.[99]

Iraq
In January 2000, Rice addressed Iraq in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine. “As history marches toward markets and democracy, some states have been left by the side of the road. Iraq is the prototype. Saddam Hussein's regime is isolated, his conventional military power has been severely weakened, his people live in poverty and terror, and he has no useful place in international politics. He is therefore determined to develop WMD. Nothing will change until Saddam is gone, so the United States must mobilize whatever resources it can, including support from his opposition, to remove him."[100]

In August 2003, Rice encouraged rejection of "condescending voices", who say that Africans and Middle Easterners are not interested in freedom and are "culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibility." She continued: "We've heard that [blacks aren't ready] argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."[101]

In October 2003, Rice was named to run the Iraq Stabilization Group, to “quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to speed the reconstruction of both countries.”[102]

In August 2003, Rice compared experiences in Iraq to post-War Germany stating that “the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers—called 'werewolves'—engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants." Daniel Benjamin responded, stating that in “practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing.”[103]

Rice meets with former Iraqi Prime Minister al-Jaafari in June 2005In June 2005, Rice stated: “And at each phase, more Iraqis are involved in this process. Sunni and Shia and Kurds and other Iraqis are concentrating politically on building a united Iraq. That is why I think the insurgency must think that its last days are eventually going to come because the Iraqis are turning to their politics to serve their future.[104]

On September 30, 2005, Rice declared that the Iraq War was "set out to help the people of the Middle East transform their societies."[48]

In 2005, when asked how long U.S. troops will stay in Iraq, Rice said, "I don't want to speculate. I do know that we are making progress with what the Iraqis themselves are capable of doing. And as they are able to do certain tasks, as they are able to hold their own territory, they will not need us to do that." Rice further added, "I think that even to try and speculate on how many years from now there will be a certain number of American forces is not appropriate."[105] Rice stated: “I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better -- and they are getting better and are holding territory, and they are doing the things with minimal help -- we are going to be able to bring down the level of our forces.” "I have no doubt that that's going to happen in a reasonable time frame."[106]

Rice lauded Iraq's voter turnout and peaceful transition into a sovereign government in 2005, and compared the reconstruction of Iraq to that of Europe after World War II. Rice wrote:

"Iraq ... in the face of a horrific insurgency has held historic elections, drafted and ratified a new national charter, and will go to the polls again in coming days to elect a new constitutional government. At this time last year, such unprecedented progress seemed impossible. One day it will all seem to have been inevitable. This is the nature of extraordinary times, which former Secretary of State Dean Acheson understood well and described perfectly in his memoirs. 'The significance of events,' he wrote, 'was shrouded in ambiguity. We groped after interpretations of them, sometimes reversed lines of action based on earlier views, and hesitated long before grasping what now seems obvious.' When Acheson left office in 1953, he could not know the fate of the policies he helped to create. He certainly could never have predicted that nearly four decades later, war between Europe's major powers would be unthinkable, or that America and the world would be harvesting the fruits of his good decisions and managing the collapse of communism. But because leaders such as Acheson steered American statecraft with our principles when precedents for action were lacking, because they dealt with their world as it was but never believed they were powerless to change it for the better, the promise of democratic peace is now a reality in all of Europe and in much of Asia."[107]

In 2006, Rice compared U.S. commitment in Iraq to the Civil War, indicating “I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold." BET.com commented “If you’re against the war in Iraq, you might as well consider yourself pro-slavery, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”[108]

On January 11, 2007, Rice addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the President’s Iraq Strategy. Rice asserted that insurgents were mainly responsible for American casualties; Senator Chuck Hagel stated, Madame Secretary, your intelligence and mine is a lot different.[109] Senator Benjamin Cardin asked Rice troop increases were adequate given the state of the Iraqi conflict. Rice responded “if you were trying to quell a civil war, you would need much larger forces” but that the augmentation was appropriate for the mission.[110]

In January 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate was issued; key judgements included: “The Intelligence Community judges that the term civil war does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term civil war accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.“[111]

In February 2007, it was reported that Rice encouraged lawmakers to support President Bush's troop increase by saying it would be a mistake to micromanage the Iraq war.[112]

North Korea

Rice, in a July, 2005 press conference, announces that North Korea has agreed to return to the Six Party TalksRice has focused international attention on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Beginning in 2003, a series of talks featuring China, North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Russia, and Japan, dubbed "The Six Party talks," have been aimed at denuclearization.

On February 10, 2005, North Korea withdrew from the talks after President Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address, in which he stated that North Korea's nuclear program must be dismantled and pledged to go on the offensive against tyranny in the world.[113] North Korea complained that the United States harbored a "hostile policy" toward their country and stated that they were permanently withdrawing from the Six-party talks.[114] In the following months, there was uncertainty over whether Rice could convince Kim Jong-Il to re-enter the negotiations, but in July 2005, North Korea announced that they had been convinced to return to the discussion.

After the first phase of the 5th round of talks, which took place from November 9–11, 2005, North Korea suspended its participations in the negotiations because the United States would not unfreeze some of its financial assets in a Macau bank.[115] Rice has consistently called for the regime to return to the talks. On May 1, 2006, Rice stated that North Korea needs "to return expeditiously to the talks without preconditions, to dismantle its nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and to cease all illicit and proliferation activities."[116]

On June 19, 2006, matters with North Korea were further complicated when it finished fueling an intercontinental ballistic missile that the regime said it would test fire. North Korea had previously self-imposed a missile-firing moratorium, but threatened to launch the missile anyway. Rice stated that "it would be a very serious matter and indeed a provocative act" for the North to follow through on the act, and that if the North decided to do so, "it would be taken with utmost seriousness."[117]

On July 5, 2006, North Korea test-fired seven rockets, including the infamous Taepodong-2,[118] sparking international backlash. Rice, in a press conference held on the same day, stated that she couldn't even begin to try to judge what motivated the North Koreans to act in such a way. Rice felt that North Korea had "miscalculated that the international community would remain united [in their opposition to the missile test-firing]" and "whatever they thought they were doing, they've gotten a very strong reaction from the international community." Following the missile test, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting and strongly condemned the actions, though no official sanctions resulted at the time.[119]

Then, in early October 2006, North Korea claimed that it was preparing to test a nuclear explosive device.[120] While the rumors could not be substantiated by satellite surveillance beforehand, the test was actually carried out on October 9, 2006 with only twenty minutes warning.[121] The nuclear detonation test was, purportedly, in response to the United States' decision to not hold direct bilateral talks with the regime, as well as America's increasing pressure on the government, which North Korea claims is evidence that the United States wishes to attack or invade their country. Rice disputes North Korea's claim that the nuclear test was committed to deter America from invading, saying, "We shouldn't even allow them such an excuse. ... It's just not the case. ... [T]here is no intention to invade or attack them. [T]hey have that guarantee."[122]

Rice meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Busan, South Korea to discuss North KoreaRice has also repeatedly offered direct negotiations with North Korea in the context of the Six Party Talks, but she has held her ground in her decision not to hold bilateral talks with the dictatorship, stating, "We've been through bilateral talks with the North Koreans in the 1994 agreed framework. It didn't hold. ... The North Koreans cheated [by] pursuing another path to a nuclear weapon, the so-called 'highly enriched uranium' path. ... [I]f [Kim Jong-Il] wants a bilateral deal, it's because he doesn't want to face the pressure of other states [nearer to him] that have leverage. It's not because he wants a bilateral deal with the United States. He doesn't want to face the leverage of China or South Korea or others."[122]

Following the nuclear test, Rice made numerous calls to foreign leaders to consolidate support for taking punitive action against North Korea. Rice was able to draw condemnations from even some of North Korea's closest defenders, including China, who admitted the test was "flagrant" and "brazen."[123] On the same day as the nuclear detonation, the United Nations Security Council convened another emergency meeting, where a clear consensus was apparent in favor of sanctions against the regime, with even China saying that it supported punishing the regime,[124] changing its position from July, 2006, when it vetoed any sanctions on North Korea following its missile tests. On October 14, 2006, Rice worked with allies to pass a UN Security Council resolution against North Korea that demanded North Korea destroy all of its nuclear weapons, imposed a ban on tanks, warships, combat aircraft and missiles in the country, imposed an embargo on some luxury items that government officials enjoy while the general populace starves, froze some of the country's weapons-related financial assets, and allows for inspections of North Korean cargo.[125] Rice called the resolution "the toughest sanctions on North Korea that have ever been imposed" and hailed the unanimous passage of the sanctions, which even North Korean-friendly China supported.[126]

But Nobel Laureate and cold-war nuclear strategist Thomas Schelling criticized Rice for organizing a punitive response, when she should have encouraged Taiwan, South Korea and Japan to reaffirm the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.[127]

While Rice consistently affirms that the United States will not preemptively invade, attack, or topple the North Korean regime, she emphatically assured Japan during an October 18, 2006, visit that "the United States has the will and the capability to meet the full range–and I underscore full range–of its deterrent and security commitments to Japan," which many have interpreted to mean that America would not hesitate to use its military might should North Korea attack one of America's allies.[128]

Russia

Rice speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during an April 2005 trip to RussiaIn April 2005, Rice went to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin. On the plane trip over, she related comments critical of Russia's democratic progress to reporters. "Trends have not been positive on the democratic side," said Rice. "There have been some setbacks, but I do still think there is a considerable amount of individual freedom in Russia, which is important."[129] In person Rice told Putin: "We see Russia as a partner in solving regional issues, like the Balkans or the Middle East."

In late 2005, there was a dispute between Russia and Ukraine after Russia decided to quadruple the price of energy being provided to the Ukrainian market[130] (making the price equal to that of the current market price). Rice subsequently criticised Russia's actions, accusing Russia of using its gas wealth as a political weapon. She called on Russia to behave as a responsible energy supplier and stated that the act did not show the international community "that it is now prepared to act … as an energy supplier in a responsible way." Rice insisted, "When you say you want to be a part of the international economy and you want to be a responsible actor in the international economy, then you play by its rules … I think that kind of behavior is going to continue to draw comment about the distance between Russian behavior and something like this and what would be expected of a responsible member of the G-8."[131]

Though there was some question over whether or not Rice could convince Russia not to block the United States' move to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council in early 2006 (because of Russia's economic and diplomatic ties to Iran), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov eventually called Rice to confirm that Russia had agreed to allow the move.[132]

In February 2006, Rice described the United States' relationship with Russia as "very good," saying, "In general, I think we have very good relations with Russia. Probably the best relations that have been there for quite some time. We cooperate in the war on terror. We cooperate in a number of areas. Obviously we have some differences, too. But on the Iranian situation, we've actually had very good cooperation with the Russians."

In February 2007, Putin criticized U.S. plans to expand European missile defenses. “Who needs the next step of what would be, in this case, an inevitable arms race?” Putin also characterized U.S. military action as illegitimate, indicating “They bring us to the abyss of one conflict after another. 'Political solutions are becoming impossible.[133] Rice soon responded “"Everybody understands that with a growing Iranian missile threat, which is quite pronounced, that there need to be ways to deal with that problem and that we are talking about long lead times to be able to have a defensive counter to offensive-missile threats”[134] In April 2007, Rice indicated that Russia’s concerns over the missile defense system were “ludicrous;” Putin responded by suggesting an end to an arms control treaty.[135]

Africa
Rice has worked to support and expand relations with Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich African nation. In April 2006, Rice welcomed dictator-President Obiang to a press conference and stated, “You are a good friend and we welcome you.” The welcome was extended 35 days after the State Department issued a report noting instances of “torture, arbitrary arrest, judicial corruption, child labor, forced labor, and ‘severe restrictions’ on freedoms of speech and press.”[136]

Venezuela

Rice discusses American-Venezuelan relations at the CARICOM Ministerials in March 2006The Bush administration has been particularly critical of the leadership of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and brands the country an "outlaw country in the drug war."[137] During Rice's confirmation hearings, she commented on Chávez: "We are very concerned about a democratically elected leader who governs in an illiberal way, and some of the steps he's taken against the media, against the opposition, I think are really very deeply troubling."

Venezuela actively campaigned for a non-permanent seat in the 2006 United Nations Security Council election. Rice, however, directed a global lobbying campaign by U.S. envoys in foreign capitals, contending that Venezuela did not belong on the Security Council.[138] On 1 November, after 47 rounds of deadlocked voting, Panama was selected as a compromise.[139]

Terrorism

Rice meets with Afghan Foreign Minister Spanta to discuss anti-terrorism effortsRice's policy as Secretary of State views counterterrorism as a matter of being preventative, and not merely punitive. In an interview that took place on December 18, 2005, Rice stated: "We have to remember that in this war on terrorism, we're not talking about criminal activity where you can allow somebody to commit the crime and then you go back and you arrest them and you question them. If they succeed in committing their crime, then hundreds or indeed thousands of people die. That's why you have to prevent, and intelligence is the long pole in the tent in preventing attacks."[140]

Rice has also been a frequent critic of the intelligence community's inability to cooperate and share information, which she believes is an integral part of preventing terrorism. In 2000, one year after Osama bin Laden told Time “[h]ostility toward America is a religious duty,”[141] and a year before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Rice warned on WJRDetroit: "You really have to get the intelligence agencies better organized to deal with the terrorist threat to the United States itself. One of the problems that we have is a kind of split responsibility, of course, between the CIA and foreign intelligence and the FBI and domestic intelligence." She then added: "There needs to be better cooperation because we don't want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory."[142]

Rice also has promoted the idea that counterterrorism involves not only confronting the governments and organizations that promote and condone terrorism, but also the ideologies that fuel terrorism. In a speech given on July 29, 2005, Rice asserted that "[s]ecuring America from terrorist attack is more than a matter of law enforcement. We must also confront the ideology of hatred in foreign societies by supporting the universal hope of liberty and the inherent appeal of democracy."[143]

In January 2005, during Bush's second inaugural ceremonies, Rice first used the term "outposts of tyranny" to refer to countries felt to threaten world peace and human rights. This term has been called a descendant of Bush's phrase, "Axis of Evil," used to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. She identified six such "outposts" in which she said the United States has a duty to foster freedom: Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma and Belarus, as well as Iran and North Korea.

Public perception and criticisms

Rice makes an appearance at Boston College, where she is greeted by Father William LeahyRice has been criticised for her involvement in the George W. Bush administration both in the United States and abroad. Protesters have sought to exclude her from appearing at schools such as Princeton University[144] and Boston College,[145] which prompted the resignation of an adjunct professor at Boston. There has also been an effort to protest her public speeches abroad.[146]

Time and Forbes magazines
Rice has appeared on Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people four times. Rice is one of only three people in the entire world considered influential enough to have made the list so frequently. However Time magazine has also accused her of squandering her influence, stating in February 1, 2007, that her "accomplishments as Secretary of State have been modest, and even those have begun to fade" and that she "has been slow to recognize the extent to which the U.S.'s prestige has declined."[147] However, in its March 19, 2007 issue it followed up stating that Rice was "executing an unmistakable course correction in U.S. foreign policy."[148]

In 2004 and 2005, she was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine and number two in 2006 (following the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel).[149]

Criticisms from Senator Boxer
California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer has also criticized Rice in relation to the war in Iraq: "I personally believe — this is my personal view — that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell the war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth."[150]

On January 11, 2007, Boxer, in a debate over the war in Iraq, said, "Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.”

The New York Post and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow considered this an attack on Rice's status as a single, childless female and referred to Boxer's comments as "a great leap backward for feminism."[151] Rice later echoed Snow's remarks, saying "I thought it was okay to not have children, and I thought you could still make good decisions on behalf of the country if you were single and didn’t have children." Boxer responded to the controversy by saying "They’re getting this off on a non-existent thing that I didn’t say. I’m saying, she’s like me, we do not have families who are in the military."[152]

Views within the African American community

Rice's approval ratings from January 2005 to September 2006Rice's ratings saw decreases following a heated battle for her confirmation as Secretary of State and following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Rice's rise within the George W. Bush administration initially drew a largely positive response from many in the African American community. In a 2002 survey, then National Security Advisor Rice was viewed favorably by 41% of African American respondents, but another 40% did not know Rice well enough to rate her and her profile remained comparatively obscure.[153] As her role increased, some African American commentators began to express doubts concerning Rice's stances and statements on various issues. In 2005, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson asked, "How did [Rice] come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans?"[154]

Other writers have also noted what they perceive to be a distance between Rice and the black community. The Black Commentator magazine described sentiments given in a speech by Rice at a black gathering as "more than strange – they were evidence of profound personal disorientation. A black woman who doesn’t know how to talk to black people is of limited political use to an administration that has few African American allies."[155] When Rice invoked the civil rights movement to clarify her position on the invasion of Iraq, Margaret Kimberley, another writer for The Black Commentator, felt that her use of the rhetoric was "offensive." Stan Correy, an interviewer from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, characterized many African Americans involved with civil rights and politics as viewing this rhetoric as "cynical."[156] Rice was also described by Bill Fletcher, Jr., the former leader of the TransAfrica Forum, a foreign policy lobbying organization in Washington, D.C., as "very cold and distant and only black by accident."[153] In August 2005, American musician, actor, and social activist Harry Belafonte, who serves on the Board of TransAfrica, referred to African Americans in the Bush administration as "black tyrants."[157] Belafonte's comments received mixed reactions.[153]

Rice has defended herself from such criticisms on several occasions. During a September 14, 2005 interview, she said: "Why would I worry about something like that? ... The fact of the matter is I've been black all my life. Nobody needs to tell me how to be black."[158]

A few notable African Americans have defended Rice from across the aisle, including Mike Espy,[159] Andrew Young, C. Delores Tucker (chair of the National Congress of Black Women),[160] Clarence Page,[161] Colbert King,[162] Dorothy Height (chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women)[163] and Kweisi Mfume (former Congressman and former CEO of the NAACP).[164]

Personal interests
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

Rice and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer participate in a news conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, May 23, 2007Rice's favorite movie is Casablanca. "I watch whenever it comes on. . . . 'Here's looking at you, kid' -- who doesn't love that line? I love Humphrey Bogart . I love everything about that movie. It's in many ways my favorite movie."[6]
Another favorite is The Way We Were: "I generally don't watch movies of redeeming value," she says. "I tend to take them as entertainment."[7]
Rice took up golf in August 2005. "I'm enjoying it immensely. I find it's one of the things that really gets me out, gets my mind clear, and I really enjoy it."[8]
Rice has said that her dream job is commissioner of the National Football League. "I think it would be a very interesting job because I actually think football, with all due respect to baseball, is a kind of national pastime that brings people together across social lines, across racial lines. And I think it's an important American institution."[9]
Rice is an accomplished pianist who plays with an ensemble as often as every other week.[10] One of her favorite composers is Brahms. "I love Brahms because Brahms is actually structured. And he's passionate without being sentimental. With Brahms it's restrained, and there's a sense of tension that never resolves."[11]
Rice has very eclectic tastes in music. In an interview with Sean Hannity she said, "I listen to just about anything Led Zeppelin's done. And I love

Al Gore

2007-10-16T02:12:11Z

Eagle:

Early life
Albert A. Gore, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., to Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., a U.S. Representative (1939–1944, 1945–1953) and Senator (1953–1971) from Tennessee and Pauline LaFon Gore, one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt University Law School. He divided his childhood between Washington, and Carthage, Tennessee:[7] as a boy, during the school year, the family lived in a hotel in Washington and during summer vacations, Gore worked on the family farm in Carthage, where hay and tobacco were grown and cattle raised.[8]

Gore attended St. Albans School where he ranked 25th (of 51) in his senior class.[9] In preparation for his college applications, Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT (625 in verbal and 730 in math). [9] Al Gore's IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Alban's School in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134. [9]

In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university to which he applied. He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row[10] and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched majors and found a passion for government and graduated with honors from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government. [9] After returning from the military he took religious studies courses at Vanderbilt and then entered the university's law school. He left Vanderbilt without a degree to run for an open seat in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District in 1976.

Gore served as a field reporter in Vietnam for five months.Gore opposed the Vietnam War and could have avoided serving overseas by accepting a spot in the National Guard that a friend of his family had reserved for him, or by other means of avoiding the draft. Gore has stated that his sense of civic duty compelled him to serve in some capacity.[11] He enlisted in the United States Army on August 7, 1969. After basic training at Fort Dix, Gore was assigned as a military journalist writing for The Army Flier, the base newspaper at Fort Rucker. With seven months remaining in his enlistment, Gore was shipped to Vietnam, arriving on January 2, 1971. He served for four months with the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa and for another month at the Army Engineer Command in Long Binh.

Gore said in 1988 that his experience in Vietnam:

didn't change my conclusions about the war being a terrible mistake, but it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang on to what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments expressed by people who did the laundry and ran the restaurants and worked in the fields was something I was naively unprepared for.[12]

As his unit was standing down, he applied for and received a non-essential personnel honorable discharge two months early in order to attend divinity school at Vanderbilt University.[13] Gore left Vanderbilt after completing the required one-year Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for students returning to secular work.[14] In 1970, Gore married Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson (known as Tipper), whom he had first met at his high school senior prom in Washington, D.C.

Gore then spent five years as a reporter for The Tennessean, a newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee. His investigations of possible corruption among members of Nashville's Metro Council resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two councilmen for separate offenses.[15] Gore then took a leave of absence from the paper to try law school. Before he could finish, he learned that his local congressman planned to retire in 1976.[citation needed]

Political career (1976–2000)

Congressional service
When Congressman Joe L. Evins announced his retirement after 30 years, Gore quit law school in March 1976 to run for the United States House of Representatives, in Tennessee's fourth district. Gore defeated Stanley Rogers in the Democratic primary, then ran unopposed in the general election and was elected to his first Congressional post. He was re-elected three times, in 1978, 1980, and 1982. In 1984, Gore successfully ran for a seat in the United States Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Majority Leader Howard Baker. Gore served as a Senator from Tennessee until 1993, when he became Vice President.

While in Congress, Gore was a member of the following committees: Armed Services (Defense Industry and Technology Projection Forces and Regional Defense; Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence); Commerce, Science and Transportation (Communications; Consumer; Science, Technology and Space — chairman 1992; Surface Transportation; National Ocean Policy Study); Joint Committee on Printing; Joint Economic Committee; and Rules and Administration.

On March 19, 1979, Gore became the first person to appear on C-SPAN, making a speech in the House chambers.[16] In the late 1980s, Gore introduced the Gore Bill, which was later passed as the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. The bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation directly affecting the expansion of the Internet.

Opposition to U.S. government support of Saddam Hussein

While Senator, Gore twice attempted to get the U.S. government to pull the plug on support to Saddam Hussein, citing Hussein's use of poison gas, support of terrorism, and his burgeoning nuclear program, but was opposed both times by the Reagan and Bush administrations. In the wake of the Al-Anfal Campaign, during which Hussein staged deadly mustard and nerve gas attacks on Kurdish Iraqis, Gore cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, which would have cut all assistance to Iraq. The bill was defeated in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President Reagan.[17] Gore's positions as a Senator with regard to Iraq would later become an issue in his 1992 campaign for Vice President.[18]

1988 Presidential election
Main article: Al Gore presidential campaign, 1988
Gore ran for President in the 1988 United States presidential election, but failed to obtain the Democratic nomination, which went to Michael Dukakis. During the campaign, Gore's strategy involved skipping the Iowa caucus and putting little emphasis on the New Hampshire Primary in order to concentrate his efforts on the South. He won Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee in the Super Tuesday primaries but dropped out of the presidential race in April after a poor showing in the New York primary.[16]

On April 3, 1989, Gore's six-year-old son Albert was nearly killed in an automobile accident while leaving the Baltimore Orioles' opening day game. Because of the resulting lengthy healing process, his father chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying the foundation for a 1992 presidential primary campaign. Gore started writing Earth in the Balance, his book on environmental conservation, during his son's recovery. It became the first book written by a sitting Senator to make The New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.

Vice Presidency

Vice President Gore talking with President Clinton as the two pass through the Colonnade at the White House.Bill Clinton chose Gore to be his running mate for the 1992 United States presidential election on July 9, 1992. Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton and Gore were re-elected to a second term in the 1996 election.

According to the U.S. government, the U.S. economy expanded for all eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration.[19] One factor was the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, for which Gore cast the tie-breaking vote. The Administration worked closely with the Republican-led House to slow federal spending and eventually balance the federal budget. One of Gore's major works as Vice President was the National Performance Review,[20] which pointed out waste, fraud, and other abuse in the federal government and stressed the need for cutting the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations. Gore stated that the National Performance Review later helped guide President Clinton when he down-sized the federal government.[21]

In 1993, Gore debated Ross Perot on CNN's Larry King Live on the issue of free trade, with Gore arguing for free trade and the passage of NAFTA, and Perot arguing against it. Public opinion polls taken after the debate showed that a majority of Americans thought Gore won the debate and now supported NAFTA[22]. The bill subsequently passed 234–200 in the House of Representatives.[23]

Gore while Vice PresidentIn 1997, Gore became the highest elected official to have run a marathon while in office. He ran the 1997 Marine Corps Marathon in 4:54:25 (an 11:14 mile pace).[24]

In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA satellite that would provide a constant view of Earth, marking the first time such an image would have been made since The Blue Marble photo from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. The "Triana" satellite would have been permanently mounted in the L1 Lagrangian Point, 1.5 million km away.[25]

Also in 1998, Gore became associated with Digital Earth.[26]

In 1999, Gore became the subject of criticism by AIDS activists. According to a June 18, 1999 article in the Washington Post the activists said that "Gore, in talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki, has threatened trade sanctions if South Africa permits the widespread sale of cheaper, generic drugs that would cut into U.S. companies' sales." Gore responded by stating, "I love this country. I love the First Amendment [...] Let me say in response to those who may have chosen an inappropriate way to make their point, that actually the crisis of AIDS in Africa is one that should command the attention of people in the United States and around the world." [27]

2000 Presidential election
Main article: Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000

Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign logoAfter two terms as Vice President, Gore ran for President again in the 2000 United States Presidential election, selecting Senator Joe Lieberman to be his vice-presidential running mate. The election was one of the closest and most controversial presidential elections in the history of the United States.

Gore's daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, worked on her father's campaign during the election as Youth Outreach Chair.[28] Together with her father's former Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, [29] Schiff officially nominated Gore as the presidential candidate during the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. [30] She also introduced her father during the launching of his campaign.[31]

During the entire campaign, Gore was neck-and-neck in the polls with Republican Governor of Texas George W. Bush. On Election Day, the results were so close that the outcome of the race took over a month to resolve, highlighted by the premature declaration of a winner on election night, and an extremely close result in the state of Florida. On election night, news networks first called Florida for Gore, later retracted the projection, and then called Florida for Bush, before finally retracting that projection as well.

The race was ultimately decided by a margin of only 537 votes in Florida. Florida's 25 electoral votes were awarded to Bush only after numerous court challenges. Gore publicly conceded the election after the Supreme Court of the United States in Bush v. Gore ruled that the Florida recount was unconstitutional and that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline, effectively ending the recounts.[32] Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but decided "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."[33]

Gore became the fourth candidate in American history to win the popular vote (by half a million more votes than his opponent) but lose the electoral vote.[34] Gore ultimately received 267 electoral votes to Bush's 271.[35]

Running mate Joe Lieberman later criticized Gore for adopting a populist theme during their 2000 campaign, and stated he had objected to Gore's "people vs. the powerful" message, believing it was not the best strategy for Democrats to use to win the election.[36]

In the introduction to his global warming presentation, Gore has jokingly introduced himself as "the former next President of the United States".

During his 2000 campaign for the presidency, Gore himself attributed positive economic results to his and Clinton's policies[37] — more than 22 million new jobs, the highest homeownership in American history (up to that time), the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the paying off of $360 billion of the national debt, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, higher incomes at all levels, the conversion of the hitherto largest budget deficit in American history into the largest surplus, the lowest government spending in three decades, the lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years, and more families owning stocks than had up to that point. However Gore later placed a large share of the blame for his election loss on the economic downturn and NASDAQ crash of March 2000 in an interview with National Public Radio's Bob Edwards.[38]

Post Vice-presidency

2004 election activities
As the first major speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gore presented himself as a living reminder that every vote counts. "Let's make sure not only that the Supreme Court does not pick the next president, but also that this president is not the one who picks the next Supreme Court," said Gore. Gore directed remarks to those who had abandoned the Democratic Party four years ago to support third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, asking them, "Do you still believe that there was no difference between the candidates?"[39]

Initially, Al Gore was touted as a logical opponent of George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election. "Re-elect Gore!" was a common slogan among many Democrats who felt he had been cheated out of the presidency, on the grounds of his winning the popular vote and the Florida voting controversies. On December 16, 2002, however, Gore announced that he would not run in 2004, saying that it was time for "fresh faces" and "new ideas" to emerge from the Democrats. When he appeared on a 60 Minutes interview, Gore said that he felt if he had run, the focus of the election would be the rematch rather than the issues. Gore's former running mate, Joe Lieberman quickly announced his own candidacy for the presidency, which he had vowed he would not do if Gore ran.

Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to "draft" him into running. However, that effort largely came to an end when Gore publicly endorsed Governor of Vermont Howard Dean (over his former running mate Lieberman) weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. There was still some effort to encourage write-in votes for Gore in the primaries by Patriots for Al Gore who were separate from the draft movement. Although Gore did receive a small number of votes in New Hampshire and New Mexico, that effort was halted when John Kerry pulled into the lead for the nomination.

On February 9, 2004, on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Gore gave what some consider his harshest criticism of the president yet when he accused George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. Gore also urged all Democrats to unite behind their eventual nominee proclaiming, "Any one of these candidates is far better than George W. Bush." In March 2004 Gore, along with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, united behind Kerry as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

On April 28, 2004, Gore announced that he would be donating $6 million to various Democratic Party groups. Drawing from his funds left over from his 2000 campaign, Gore pledged to donate $4 million to the Democratic National Committee. The party's Senate and House committees would each get $1 million, and the party from Gore's home state of Tennessee would receive $250,000. In addition, Gore announced that all of the surplus funds in his "Recount Fund" from the 2000 election controversy that resulted in the Supreme Court halting the counting of the ballots, a total of $240,000, will be donated to the Florida Democratic Party. Gore stressed the importance of voting and having every vote counted, foreshadowing the 2004 United States election voting controversies.

2008 Presidential election plans
Gore has not stated that he will participate as a candidate in the 2008 presidential election. However, as he has not rejected the possibility outright, the prospect of a Gore candidacy remains a topic of public speculation. Some of Gore's supporters have publicly encouraged him to join the race. An April 2007 Quinnipiac University poll of 504 registered Democrats in New Jersey showed Gore receiving 12% of the votes in a hypothetical Democratic primary, in third place behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.[40]

Gore and his family have commented on whether Gore will run in the 2008 presidential election. In December 2006, Gore stated on NBC's Today: "I am not planning to run for president again [...] I haven't completely ruled it out."[41] His son, Albert Gore III, followed with a comment in a December 14, 2006 article: "I know that [my father] has no plans to run in 2008 [...] Well, I guess I have to add his addendum. I think the way he always says it is, "I don't see any circumstances under which I would run for president.""[42]

The release of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 increased Gore's popularity among progressives.[43][44] Gore received 68% of support among "fantasy" potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates in a May 2006 straw poll of visitors to Daily Kos[45] and 35% in a July 13, 2006 survey of AlterNet readers.[46] A Gallup poll of August 2006 shows that nearly half of Americans viewed Gore favorably (48 percent to 45 percent).[47] A CNN telephone poll conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation of registered or independent leaning Democrats in November 2006 had Gore with 14% support in a theoretical multi-candidate Democratic primary election.[citation needed]

Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign chairwoman from the 2000 campaign made cryptic comments during a speech on January 31, 2007, at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania stating, "Wait till Oscar night, I tell people: 'I'm dating. I haven't fallen in love yet. On Oscar night, if Al Gore has slimmed down 25 or 30 pounds, Lord knows.'"[48] The meaning of these remarks became clearer when on award night, while in attendance and acting as a presenter for an award, Gore began a speech that seemed to be leading up to an announcement that he would run for president. However, background music drowned him out and he was escorted offstage, implying it was a rehearsed gag.[49]

Others have expressed an interest in seeing Gore run in 2008. According to the February 6, 2007 issue of The Santa Barbara Independent, when Gore received The Sir David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2, director James Cameron (who presented him with the award) stated: "[I] beseech Mr. Gore to step up to the plate one more time!"[50] Furthermore, the February 8, 2007 edition of The Washington Post notes in the article Supporters Push Gore to Run in 2008, "Veterans of Al Gore's past are quietly assembling a campaign to draft the former vice president into the 2008 presidential race — despite his repeated statements that he's not running [...] In 2002, Gore asked [Dylan] Malone, to stop a draft effort he had begun; Malone did. Malone started up again and, so far, Gore hasn't waved him off."[51]

The question of whether or not Gore will run was the cover story of the May 28, 2007 issue of TIME magazine, The Last Temptation of Al Gore.[52]

A 29 June 2007 article in the The Guardian cited a poll conducted "in New Hampshire by 7News and Suffolk University" that found that if Gore "were to seek the Democratic nomination, 29% of Mrs. Clinton's backers would switch their support to him [...] when defections from other candidates are factored in, the man who controversially lost to Mr. Bush in the 2000 election takes command of the field, with 32% support."[53]

Education
Gore has been involved in education on a number of levels. He taught at four universities in 2001 as a visiting professor (Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,[54] Fisk University[55] Middle Tennessee State University,[56] and UCLA.[57]) He was also elected an honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2007. He will be inducted in a ceremony in October 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [58] Finally, Concordia University awarded Gore an honorary doctorate on March 22 during the Youth Action Montreal's Youth Summit on Climate Change in Quebec, Canada.[59]

Private citizen
On September 23, 2002, in a speech before the Commonwealth Club, Gore gave what many consider to be one of the strongest speeches by any public figure criticizing President George W. Bush and Congress for their rush to war prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq.[60] In it, Gore warned of the great expense the war was sure to incur, the risk to America's reputation in the world, and the questionable legality of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.[61]

In September 2005, Gore chartered two aircraft to evacuate 270 evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.[62] He was highly critical of the government and federal response in the days after the hurricane.

Gore's 2007 book, The Assault on Reason, is an analysis of what he calls the "emptying out of the marketplace of ideas" in civic discourse, which, according to Gore, is due to the influence of electronic media, especially television, and which endangers American democracy; but he also expresses the belief that the Internet can revitalize and ultimately "redeem the integrity of representative democracy."[63]

Promoting environmental awareness

Gore giving his global warming talk on April 7, 2006.According to a February 27, 2007 article in The Concord Monitor, "Gore was one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of climate change and to call for a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. He held the first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s."[64] During his tenure in Congress, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978–79, and hearings on global warming in the 1980s.[65] On 14 May 1989 while still a Senator, Gore published an editorial in the Washington Post which argued that, "Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world's forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate." [66]

On Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the GLOBE program, an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment".[67]

In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.[68][69] He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[70] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".[71] On November 12, 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[72] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

In recent years, Gore has remained busy traveling the world speaking and participating in events mainly aimed towards global warming awareness and prevention. His keynote presentation on global warming has received standing ovations, and he has presented it at least 1,000 times according to his monologue in An Inconvenient Truth. His speaking fee is $100,000.[73]

In 2004, he launched Generation Investment Management. This firm, which he chairs, seeks out companies which take a responsible view on global issues such as climate change. It was created to assist the growing demand for an investment style that can bring returns by blending traditional equity research with a focus on more intangible non-financial factors such as social and environmental responsibility and corporate governance.

Gore speaking in 2007Gore is a vocal proponent of carbon neutrality, buying a carbon offset each time he travels by aircraft.[74] Gore and his family drive hybrid vehicles.[75] In "An Inconvenient Truth" Gore calls for people to conserve energy, but the Gore family mansion in Nashville consumes 12 to 20 times more energy than the average family home, and its consumption has risen since the film was produced in 2005. [76] Gore's supporters, however, counter that the Gore Family has done much to offset their carbon footprint and electrical usage, such as through the installation of solar panels.

Interest in Al Gore's speeches reached such a point that a public lecture at University of Toronto on February 21, 2007, on the topic of global warming, led to a crash of the ticket sales website within minutes of opening.[77] A few weeks later, he spoke at another event in the same city and, for the first time, made the argument that employers have a significant role to play in mobilizing their employees to take action on climate change.[78]

During Global Warming Awareness Month, on February 9, 2007, Al Gore and Richard Branson announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, a competition offering a $25 million prize for the first person or organization to produce a viable design that results in the removal of atmospheric greenhouse gases.[79]

On July 7, 2007, Live Earth benefit concerts were held around the world in an effort to raise awareness about climate change. The event was the brainchild of both Gore and Kevin Wall of Save Our Selves.

On July 21, 2007, he announced teaming with actress Cameron Diaz for a TV climate contest 60 Seconds to Save the Earth to gain people's support in solving the climate crisis.[80]

Gore starred in the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.[81] The Oscar was awarded to director Davis Guggenheim, who asked Gore to join him and other members of the crew on stage. During this time, Gore gave a brief speech: "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue; it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a renewable resource. Let's renew it."[82]

The film, released on May 24, 2006, documents the evidence for anthropogenic global warming and warns of the consequences of people not making immediate changes to their behavior. In late July, it surpassed Bowling for Columbine as the third-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history.[83] Gore also published a book of the same title, which became a bestseller. In reference to the use of nuclear power to mitigate global warming, Gore has stated, "Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming." [84]

2007 Nobel Peace Prize
Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Rajendra K. Pachauri (Delhi, India).[85] The award was given "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" on October 12, 2007.[86] Response to the event was broad and varied.[87][88]

Gore made the following statement after receiving the prize:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis—a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level. My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.[89]

Internet and technology
Main article: Al Gore's contributions to the Internet and technology

Gore at the Ansari X Prize Executive Summit, October 19, 2006Al Gore was involved in the development and mainstreaming of the Internet as both Senator and Vice-President. Campbell-Kelly and Aspray note in Chapter 12 of their 1996 text, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, that up until the early 1990s, public usage of the Internet was limited. They continue to state that the "problem of giving ordinary Americans network access had exercised Senator Al Gore since the late 1970s" leading him to develop legislation that would alleviate this problem.[90] Gore thus began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 which was passed on Dec. 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII)[91] which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway".

In 1999, various media outlets suggested that Gore claimed that he "invented the Internet"[92][93] in reference to a CNN interview in which he said, "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."[94]

In response to this controversy, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wrote a 2000-09-29 article (originally sent via email) that described Gore's contributions to the Internet since the 1970s, including his work on the Gore Bill:[95]

[A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective. As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.

Gore has been a member of the board of directors of Apple Inc. since 2003 and serves as a Senior Advisor to Google Inc.[96]

On 06 June 2005, Gore was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award "for three decades of contributions to the Internet" at The Webby Awards. In giving him the award, Tiffany Shlain (the awards' founder and chairwoman) stated that she "wanted to set the record straight [...] it's just one of those instances someone did amazing work for three decades as Congressman, Senator and Vice President and it got spun around into this political mess."[97] Gore, during his acceptance speech (limited to five words according to Webby Awards rules), joked: "Please don't recount this vote".[98]

On May 4, 2004, INdTV Holdings, a company co-founded by Gore and Joel Hyatt, purchased cable news channel NewsWorld International from Vivendi Universal. The network was relaunched under the name Current TV on August 1, 2005. On September 16, 2007, Current TV won the Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television award at the 2007 Primetime Emmys[99] for its use of online technologies with television. In his acceptance speech, Gore stated, "we are trying to open up the television medium so that viewers can help to make television and join the conversation of democracy and reclaim American democracy by talking about the choices we have to make. More to come. Current.com. Next month."[100]

Controversies
Main article: Al Gore controversies
Gore has been the subject of several controversies, including his role in the 1996 United States campaign finance controversy, his use of energy in home, and a statement in an interview.

Honors and awards
2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (environment)
2007 Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television for Current TV, Primetime Emmy Award (interactive technology)
2007 Prince of Asturias Award in Spain (environment) [101]
2007 The Sir David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Filmmaking (environment) [102]
2007 Honorary Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences [103]
2005 Lifetime Achievement Award, Webby Awards (interactive technology)

Al Gore in popular culture
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Gore as depicted in the Futurama episode "Crimes of the Hot".Gore has made numerous appearances in popular culture related to environmentalism. Gore has also made numerous appearances in Matt Groening's hit cartoon sitcom Futurama as himself, and will reprise the role in the upcoming December 2007 film, Futurama: Bender's Big Score.[104] In 2000 Gore had offered to appear in the 2000 season finale of Futurama, Anthology of Interest I. In this episode, Gore led his team of "Vice Presidential Action Rangers" in their goal to protect the space-time continuum.[105] In 2002, Gore appeared in the episode Crimes of the Hot.[106]

Gore's willingness to poke fun at himself on the show was later cited by pundits as an example of the way he re-invented the purportedly stiff and emotionless persona that he had displayed in public before his electoral loss in 2000.[107] In a review of the episode, Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz called it a "groundbreaking role" and suggested that it was "post-election reemergence ... as carefully choreographed as a political campaign".[108]

In 2006 Gore used a short clip from Futurama to explain how global warming works in his presentations and in An Inconvenient Truth.[109]

In 2006 Gore appeared on Saturday Night Live (episode #603), In an opening sketch, Gore is in a parallel Earth in which he won the 2000 Presidential race. Gore describes the state of the nation: global warming has been stopped; gasoline costs 19¢ a gallon; George W. Bush is Commissioner of Baseball; welfare and Social Security have been reformed and America now enjoys universal health care; Gore helped develop an anti-hurricane/tornado machine; and the federal surplus is down to eleven trillion dollars.
In 2002 Gore hosted Saturday Night Live, (episode #533).
Al Gore is lampooned in the 2006 South Park episode Manbearpig, in which creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker satirize his concerns about global warming. Gore responded by saying, "Their comic sensibility is aimed at a different demographic than the one I inhabit, but I still find a lot of what they do hilarious."[110]

Electoral history
2000 United States Presidential Election
George W. Bush (R) — 271 Electoral Votes (47.9% of popular vote)
Al Gore (D) — 266 Electoral Votes (48.4% of popular vote)
Ralph Nader (Green) 2.7% of popular vote
Pat Buchanan (Reform) 0.4% of popular vote
Harry Browne (Libertarian) 0.4% of popular vote
Howard Phillips (Constitution) 0.1% of popular vote
John Hagelin (Natural Law) 0.1% of popular vote
1996 United States Presidential Election (Vice President's seat)
Al Gore (D) (inc.) — 379 Electoral Votes (49.2% of popular vote)
Jack Kemp (R) 40.7% — 159 Electoral Votes (40.7% of popular vote)
Pat Choate 8.4% of popular vote
Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian) 0.5% of popular vote
Herbert Titus (Taxpayers) 0.2% of popular vote
Michael Tompkins (Natural Law) 0.1% of popular vote
1992 United States Presidential Election (Vice President's seat)
Al Gore (D) — 370 Electoral Votes (43.0% of popular vote)
Dan Quayle (R) (inc.) — 168 Electoral Votes (37.4% of popular vote)
James Stockdale (I) 18.9% of popular vote
Nancy Lord (Libertarian) 0.3% of popular vote
Cy Minett (Populist) 0.1% of popular vote
1990 Tennessee United States Senatorial Election
Al Gore (D) (inc.) 69.6%
Dwight Henry (R) 30.4%
1984 Tennessee United States Senatorial Election
Al Gore (D) 60.7% of popular vote
Victor Ashe (R) 33.8% of popular vote
Ed McAteer (I) 5.3% of popular vote

Family
Gore had an elder sister, Nancy Gore Hunger. She died of lung cancer in 1984.[111]

Gore is married to Tipper Gore. They have four children: Karenna (born August 6, 1973), married to Andrew "Drew" Schiff[112]; Kristin Cusack (born June 5, 1977), married to Paul Cusack; Sarah Lee (born January 7, 1979), married to Taiwanese-American businessman Bill Lee[113] (李君偉)[114]; and Albert III (born October 19, 1982). The Gores also have two grandchildren: Wyatt Gore Schiff (born July 4, 1999) and Anna Hunger Schiff (born August 23, 2001).[115] Sarah is currently a medical student at University of California, San Francisco.[116] Albert works as associate publisher of the philanthropic Good magazine.

The Gores reside in Nashville, Tennessee, and own a small farm near Carthage; they attend New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Carthage. In late 2005 the Gores bought a condominium at San Francisco's St. Regis.[117]

See also
Florida election recount
United States presidential election in Florida, 2000
Bush v. Gore

Bibliography
Books and other publications
Gore, Al (2007). The Assault on Reason. New York: Penguin. ISBN 1594201226.
Gore, Al (2006). An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We can do about it. New York: Rodale Books. ISBN 1594865671.
Gore, Al (2002). Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family. ISBN 0805074503.
Gore, Al (2002). The Spirit of Family. ISBN 0805068945.
Gore, Al (2001). From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less. ISBN 158963571X.
Gore, Al (1998). Common Sense Government: Works Better & Costs Less: National Performance Review (3rd Report). ISBN 0788139088.
Gore, Al (1997). Businesslike Government: lessons learned from America's best companies. ISBN 0788170538.
Gore, Al (1992). Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose. Earthscan. ISBN 0618056645.
Articles, reports, and speeches
Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues, January, 2006
Transcript of Al Gore's speech at the Sierra Summit, September 9, 2005
Remarks of Former Vice President Al Gore to the Democratic National Convention, 2004
Transcript: Former Vice President Al Gore:Matching our Nation's Economic Course to Our Current Realities — Brookings Institution, October, 2002
Transcript: Gore remarks on Florida vote certification, November 27, 2000
The Digital Earth:Understanding our planet in the 21st Century, by Vice President Al Gore, Given at the California Science Center, Los Angeles, California, on January 31, 1998.
The Climate Change Action Plan. Washington, DC: The White House, October, 1993 (with William Clinton).
News briefs — Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., talks about the environment — Letter to the Editor, Science World, 3 September 1993.
Earth's Fate Is the No. 1 National Security Issue

Karl Rove

2007-10-16T02:10:15Z

Eagle:

Personal life and early political experiences

Family, upbringing, and early politicking
Rove was born the second of three children in Denver, Colorado, and later raised in Sparks, Nevada. His biological father abandoned the family early on and his mother remarried. His new adoptive father, Louis Claude Rove Jr., was a geologist, and his mother, Reba Wood, was a gift shop manager. His older brother is Eric P. Rove, and his younger sister is Reba A. Rove-Hammond.

In 1960, at the age of nine, Rove decided to support Richard Nixon in which he got into physical fight with a politically-motivated girl and lost.[2]

His family moved to Salt Lake City in 1965 when Rove was entering high school. While at Olympus High School, he was elected student council president his junior and senior years. He became skilled in debate.[3] He says "I was the complete nerd. I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector. I wore Hush Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin, scrawny little guy. I was definitely uncool."

Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968. In a 2002 Deseret News interview, Rove explained, "I was the Olympus High chairman for (former United States Senator) Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science professor at the University of Utah, J.D. Williams."[2] Bennett was reelected to a third six-year term. Through Rove's campaign involvement, Bennett's son, Bob Bennett — a future United States Senator from Utah — would become a friend. Williams would later become a mentor to Rove.

In December 1969, Rove's stepfather left the family, and divorced Rove's mother soon afterward; it ultimately became known he was homosexual.[4] After his parents' separation, Rove learned from his aunt and uncle that the man who had raised him was not his biological father; both he and his older brother Eric were the children of another man. Rove has expressed great love and admiration for his adoptive father and for "how selfless" his love had been.[5] In 1981 Rove's mother committed suicide in Reno, Nevada.[5]

College, Vietnam War draft, and the Dixon campaign incident
In the fall of 1969, aged 18, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship,[6] as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Through the University's Hinckley Institute of Politics, Rove got an internship with the Utah Republican Party. That position and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped Rove land a job in 1970 in Illinois, helping on the unsuccessful re-election campaign of Ralph Tyler Smith for the Senate. Smith lost to Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III.

In December 1969, the Selective Service System held its first lottery drawing. Those born on December 25, like Rove, received number 84. That number placed him in the middle of those (with numbers 1 [first priority] through 195) who would eventually be drafted. On February 17, 1970, Rove was reclassified as 2-S, a deferment from the draft because of his enrollment at the University of Utah in the fall of 1969. He maintained this deferment until December 14, 1971, despite being only a part-time student in the autumn and spring quarters of 1971 (registered for between six and 12 credit hours) and dropping out of the university in June 1971. Rove was a student at the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 1971; as such, he would have been eligible for 2-S status, but registrar's records show that he withdrew from classes during the first half of the semester. In December 1971 he was reclassified as 1-A. On April 27, 1972, he was reclassified as 1-H, or "not currently subject to processing for induction". The draft ended on June 30, 1973.

In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Illinois State Treasurer, and stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead. Rove then printed fake campaign rally fliers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon's rally (Dixon eventually won the election). Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973. Rove told the Dallas Morning News in 1999, "It was a youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it."[7]

College Republicans, Watergate, and the Bushes
In June 1971, Rove dropped out of college to take a paid position as the Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee. Joe Abate, who was National Chairman of the College Republicans at the time, became a mentor to Rove.

Rove traveled extensively, participating as an instructor at weekend seminars for campus conservatives across the country. He was an active participant in Richard Nixon's 1972 Presidential campaign. As a protégé of Donald Segretti (later convicted as a Watergate conspirator), Rove painted the Nixon opponent George McGovern as a "left-wing peacenik", in spite of McGovern's World War II stint piloting a B-24.[8]

Rove held the position of executive director of the College Republicans until early 1973. He left the job to spend five months, without pay, campaigning full time for the position of national chairman of the organization, for the 1973-1975 term in the same years he attended George Mason University.[5] Lee Atwater, the group's Southern regional coordinator, who was two months younger than Rove, managed Rove's campaign. The two spent the spring of 1973 crisscrossing the country in a Ford Pinto, lining up the support of Republican state chairs.

The College Republicans summer 1973 convention at the Lake of the Ozarks resort in Missouri was quite contentious. Rove's opponent was Robert Edgeworth of Michigan (the other major candidate, Terry Dolan of California, dropped out, supporting Edgeworth). A number of states had sent two competing delegates, because Rove and his supporters had made credentials challenges at state and regional conventions. For example, after the Midwest regional convention, Rove forces had produced a version of the Midwestern College Republicans constitution which differed significantly from the constitution that the Edgeworth forces were using, in order to justify the unseating of the Edgeworth delegates on procedural grounds.[5] including delegations, such as Ohio and Missouri, which had been certified earlier by Rove himself. In the end, there were two votes, conducted by two convention chairs, and two winners — Rove and Edgeworth, each of whom delivered an acceptance speech. After the convention, both Edgeworth and Rove appealed to Republican National Committee Chairman George H. W. Bush, each contending that he was the new College Republican chairman.

While resolution was pending, Dolan went (anonymously) to the Washington Post with recordings of several training seminars for young Republicans where Rove discussed campaign techniques that included rooting through opponents' garbage cans. On August 10, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the Post broke the story in an article titled "Republican Party Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks."

At Nixon's request, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent questioned Rove. As part of the investigation, Atwater signed an affidavit, dated August 13, 1973, stating that he had heard a "20 minute anecdote similar to the one described in the Washington Post" in July 1972, but that "it was a funny story during a coffee break."[9] Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, who was implicated in the Watergate break-in and became the star witness for the prosecution, has been quoted as saying that "Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him."[10]

On September 6, 1973, three weeks after announcing his intent to investigate the allegations against Rove, Bush chose Rove to be chairman of the College Republicans. Bush then wrote Edgeworth a letter saying that he had concluded that Rove had fairly won the vote at the convention. Edgeworth wrote back, asking about the basis of that conclusion. Not long after that, Edgeworth has said, "Bush sent me back the angriest letter I have ever received in my life. I had leaked to the Washington Post, and now I was out of the Party forever."

As National Chairman, Rove introduced Bush to Atwater, who had taken Rove's job as the College Republican's executive director, and who would become Bush's main campaign strategist in future years. Bush hired Rove as a special assistant in the Republican National Committee, a job Rove left in 1974 to become executive assistant to the co-chair of the RNC, Richard D. Obenshain.

As special assistant, Rove also performed small personal tasks for Bush. In November 1973, Bush asked Rove to take a set of car keys to his son George W. Bush, who was visiting home during a break from Harvard Business School. It was the first time the two met. "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma - you know, wow", Rove recalled years later.[11]

Residences and voting registration
In 1976, Rove became the Finance Director for the Virginia Republican Party, which did not have a single fundraising event on its schedule at the time. Rove moved to Richmond, Virginia. Within a year, Rove had pulled in more than $400,000 through direct mail fundraising.

Rove first married Houston socialite Valerie Mather Wainwright, on July 10, 1976. Later, he moved to Texas on the first month of next year. His sister and father still remembered "the wedding [that] was so extravagant that [we] ... still recall it with awe. But the marriage of the society daughter and the hardworking political hack didn't last long."[12] Wainwright divorced Rove in early 1980 while Wainwright was 26 and Rove was 29.[13] Also attending the University of Texas at Austin in 1977, Rove did not have a college degree from any of his previously attended institutions. A July 1999 Washington Post response by Rove as to why he did not complete college was because "I lack at this point one math class, which I can take by exam, and my foreign language requirement." Already having been divorced, Rove married Darby Tara Hickson sometime in January 1986, who was a breast cancer survivor and a graphic designer and former employee of Karl Rove + Co. They have a son, Andrew Madison Rove, born in 1989,[5] an undergraduate at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Rove left Texas after Bush was elected President in late 2000.

Now owning home in the District of Columbia that is valued at $1.1 million, Rove sold his longtime home in Austin in 2003. The Washington Post reported that Rove had agreed to reimburse the District for an estimated $3,400 in back taxes back in September 2005. The taxes were owed because since 2002, when the law changed, Rove was not entitled to a homestead exemption for his DC house because he was voting elsewhere (in Texas).[14] Rove was registered to vote in Kerr County, Texas about 80 miles west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country, on May 26, 2004. The residence that Rove claims on Texas voter registration rolls consists of two small rental cottages, the largest of which is 814 square feet. The cottages were part of the River Oaks Lodge that Rove and his wife, Darby, once owned on the Guadalupe River near Ingram. The Roves sold the lodge in 2003, after renovating it,[7] but kept the two cottages, which the lodge rents to guests. (Darby T. Rove is listed as a director of the new owner of the lodge, Estadio Partners, LLC.) In early October 2005, a resident of Kerr County filed a complaint with the District Attorney of the county, requesting an investigation into whether Rove and his wife violated Texas state law by illegally registering as voters in Kerr County, since neither had ever lived there.[15] Texas law defines a residence, for voting purposes, as "one's home and fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after any temporary absence."[16] On November 3, 2005, Rex Emerson, the District Attorney, announced that he had determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute either Rove or his wife, and that his office would close the case without further action.[17][18]

In addition to the $1.1 million home he owned in the District in 2005, Rove and his wife built a home in Florida worth more than $1 million, according to Rove's 2005 financial disclosure form.[19]

The Texas years and notable political campaigns

1977–1991
Rove's initial job in Texas was as a legislative aide for Fred Agnich, a Texas state representative, in Agnich's Dallas office. Later in 1977, Rove got a job as executive director of the Fund for Limited Government, a political action committee (PAC) in Houston headed by James A. Baker, a Houston lawyer (later President George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State). The PAC eventually became the genesis of the Bush-for-President campaign of 1979–1980.

His work for Bill Clements during the Texas gubernatorial election of 1978 helped Clements become the first Republican Governor of Texas in over 100 years. Clements was elected to a four-year term, succeeding scandal-plagued Democrat Dolph Briscoe. Rove was deputy director of the Governor William P. Clements Junior Committee in 1979 and 1980, and deputy executive assistant to the governor of Texas (roughly, Deputy Chief of Staff) in 1980 and 1981.[20]

In 1981, Rove founded a direct mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Co., in Austin. The firm's first clients included Texas Governor Bill Clements and Democratic congressman Phil Gramm, who later became a Republican congressman and United States Senator. Rove operated his consulting business until 1999, when he sold the firm to take a full-time position in George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

Between 1981 and 1999, Rove worked on hundreds of races. Most were in a supporting role, doing direct mail fundraising. A November 2004 Atlantic Monthly article[21] estimated that he was the primary strategist for 41 statewide, congressional, and national races, and Rove's candidates won 34 races.

Rove also did work during those years for non-political clients. From 1991 to 1996, Rove advised tobacco giant Phillip Morris, and ultimately earned $3,000 a month via a consulting contract. In a deposition, Rove testified that he severed the tie in 1996 because he felt awkward "about balancing that responsibility with his role as Bush's top political advisor" while Bush was governor of Texas and Texas was suing the tobacco industry.[22]

1978 George W. Bush congressional campaign
Rove advised the younger Bush during his unsuccessful Texas congressional campaign in 1978.

1980 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign
In 1977, Rove was the first person hired by George H. W. Bush for his official (ultimately unsuccessful) 1980 presidential campaign, which ended with Bush being selected as Ronald Reagan's vice-presidential nominee. Reagan and Bush won the election, but Rove was fired in the middle of the campaign for leaking information to the press.

1982 William Clements, Jr. gubernatorial campaign
In 1982, Clements ran for reelection, but was defeated by Democrat Mark White.

1982 Phil Gramm congressional campaign
In 1982, Phil Gramm was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a conservative Texas Democrat.

1984 Phil Gramm senatorial campaign
In 1984, Rove helped Gramm, who had become a Republican in 1983, defeat Democrat Lloyd Doggett in the race for U.S. Senate.

1984 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign
Rove handled direct-mail for the Reagan-Bush campaign.

1986 William Clements, Jr. gubernatorial campaign
In 1986, Rove helped Clements become governor a second time. In a strategy memo Rove wrote for his client prior to the race, now among Clements's papers in the Texas A&M University library, Rove quoted Napoleon: "The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack."

In 1986, just before a crucial debate in campaign, Rove claimed that his office had been bugged by Democrats. The police and FBI investigated and discovered that the bug's battery was so small that it needed to be changed every few hours, and the investigation was dropped.[23] Critics suspected Rove had bugged his own office to garner sympathy votes in the close governor's race.[24]

1988 Texas Supreme Court races
In 1988, Rove helped Tom Phillips become the first Republican elected as Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Phillips had been appointed to the position in November 1987 by Clements. Phillips was re-elected in 1990, 1996 and 2002.

Phillips' election in 1988 was part of an aggressive grassroots campaign called "Clean Slate '88", a conservative effort that was successful in getting five of its six candidates elected. (Ordinarily there were three justices on the ballot each year, on a nine-justice court, but, because of resignations, there were six races for the Supreme Court on the ballot in November 1988.) By 1998, Republicans held all nine seats on the Court.

1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign
In 1989, Rove encouraged George W. Bush to run for Texas governor, brought in experts to tutor him on policy, and introduced him to local reporters. Eventually, Bush decided not to run, and Rove backed another Republican for governor who lost in the primary.

Other 1990 Texas statewide races
In 1990, two other Rove candidates won: Rick Perry, the future governor of the state, became agricultural commissioner, and Kay Bailey Hutchison became state treasurer. The 1990 election was notable because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), earlier that year, had investigated every Democratic officeholder in the state. The FBI investigation nailed Agriculture Commission employees Mike Moeller and senior administrator Pete McRae for soliciting contributions for then-agricultural commissioner Jim Hightower.

1991 Richard Thornburgh senatorial campaign and lawsuit
In 1991, Richard L. Thornburgh resigned as United States Attorney General to run in a special election for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania (vacated by John Heinz, who was killed in a helicopter crash), and hired Rove's company. After Thornburgh's loss to Democrat Harris Wofford, Rove sued Thornburgh and alleged Thornburgh had not paid for services rendered. The Republican National Committee, worried that the suit would make it hard to recruit good candidates, urged Rove to back off. When Rove refused, the RNC hired Kenneth Starr to write an amicus brief on Thornburgh's behalf. The case went to trial in Austin, and Rove won.[25] Karl Rove & Co. v. Thornburgh was heard by U.S. Federal Judge Sam Sparks (who had been appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1991).

1992 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign
Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief Robert Mosbacher Jr. (Esquire Magazine, January 2003). Novak provided some evidence of motive in his column describing the firing of Mosbacher by former Senator Phil Gramm: "Also attending the session was political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher." Novak and Rove deny that Rove was the leaker, but Mosbacher maintains, "Rove is the only one with a motive to leak this. We let him go. I still believe he did it."[26] During testimony before the CIA leak grand jury, Rove apparently confirmed his prior involvement with Novak in the 1992 campaign leak, according to National Journal reporter Murray Waas.[27]

1993–2000
1993 Kay Bailey Hutchison senatorial campaign Rove helped Hutchison win a special Senate election in June 1993. Hutchison defeated Democrat Bob Krueger to fill the last two years of Lloyd Bentsen's term. Bentsen resigned to become Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.

1994 Alabama Supreme Court races In 1994, a group called the Business Council of Alabama hired Rove to help run a slate of Republican candidates for the state supreme court. No Republican had been elected to that court in more than a century. The campaign by the Republicans was unprecedented in the state, which had previously only seen low-key contests. After the election, a court battle over absentee and other ballots followed that lasted more than 11 months. It ended when a federal appeals court judge ruled that disputed absentee ballots could not be counted, and ordered the Alabama Secretary of State to certify the Republican candidate for Chief Justice, Perry Hooper, as the winner. An appeal to the Supreme Court by the Democratic candidate was turned down within a few days, making the ruling final. Hooper won by 262 votes.

Another candidate, Harold See, ran against Mark Kennedy, an incumbent Democratic justice and the son-in-law of George Wallace. The race included charges that Kennedy was mingling campaign funds with those of a non-profit children's foundation he was involved with. A former Rove staffer reported that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile.[21] Kennedy won by less than one percentage point.

1994 John Ashcroft senatorial campaign In 1993, according to the New York Times, Karl Rove & Company was paid $300,000 in consulting fees by Ashcroft's successful 1994 Senate campaign. Ashcroft paid Rove's company more than $700,000 over the course of three campaigns.

1994 George W. Bush gubernatorial campaign In 1993, Rove began advising George W. Bush in his successful campaign to become governor of Texas. Bush announced his candidacy in November 1993. By January 1994, Bush had spent more than $600,000 on the race against incumbent Democrat Ann Richards, with $340,000 of that paid to Rove's firm.

Rove has been accused of using supposed pollsters to call voters to ask such things as whether people would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians." During the race, a regional chairman of the Bush campaign was quoted criticizing Richards for "appointing avowed homosexual activists" to state jobs. Only circumstantial evidence links Rove to the push-polling.

1996 Harold See's campaign for Associate Justice, Alabama Supreme Court According to a Rove employee, Rove was dissatisfied with the campaign's progress and printed flyers — absent any trace of who was behind them — attacking See and his family. See won the race.[21]

1998 George W. Bush gubernatorial campaign Rove was an adviser for Bush's 1998 reelection campaign. From July through December 1998, Bush’s reelection committee paid Rove & Co. nearly $2.5 million, and also paid the Rove-owned Praxis List Company $267,000 for use of mailing lists. Rove says his work for the Bush campaign included direct mail, voter contact, phone banks, computer services, and travel expenses. Of the $2.5 million, Rove said, "About 30 percent of that is postage". In all, Bush (primarily through Rove's efforts) raised $17.7 million, with $3.4 million unspent as of March 1999.[28]

2000 Harold See campaign for Chief Justice For the race to succeed Perry Hooper, who was retiring as Alabama's chief justice, Rove lined up support for See from a majority of the state's important Republicans. [citation needed]

2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign and the sale of Rove + Co.
In early 1999, Rove sold his 20-year-old direct-mail business, Rove + Co., which provided campaign services to candidates, along with Praxis List Company (in whole or part) to Ted Delisi and Todd Olsen, two young political operatives who had worked on campaigns of some other Rove candidates. Rove helped finance the sale of the company, which had 11 employees. Selling Karl Rove + Co. was a condition that George W. Bush had insisted on before Rove took the job of chief strategist for Bush's presidential bid.[22]

During the 2000 Republican primary, a South Carolina push poll used racist innuendo intended to undermine the support of Bush rival John McCain: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" [29] The authors of the 2003 book and subsequent film Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, [30] allege that Rove was involved. In the movie, John Weaver, political director for McCain's 2000 campaign bid, says "I believe I know where that decision was made; it was at the top of the [Bush] campaign". McCain campaign manager Richard Davis said he "had no idea who had made those calls, who paid for them, or how many were made", and Rove has denied any such involvement. [31]

After the presidential elections in November 2000, Rove organized an emergency response of Republican politicians and supporters to go to Florida to assist the Bush campaign's position during the Florida recount.

George W. Bush Administration

Rove with George W. and Laura BushGeorge W. Bush was first inaugurated in January 2001, and Rove accepted a position in the Bush administration as Senior Advisor to the President. The President's confidence in Rove has been so strong that during a meeting with South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun on May 14, 2003, he brought only Rove and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Rove has played a significant role in shaping policy at the White House. One oft-cited example is that terror warnings were regularly made at times when John Kerry's ratings rose during the 2004 presidential election. Another is the 2006 announcement that planned terrorist attacks had been thwarted, which was made soon after the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program was discovered. Rove was reassigned from his policy development role to one focusing on strategic and tactical planning in April 2006, the same month that Joshua Bolten replaced Andrew Card as White House Chief of Staff.[32]

White House Iraq Group
In 2002 and 2003 Rove chaired meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secretive internal White House working group established by August 2002, eight months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to CNN and Newsweek, WHIG was charged with developing a strategy for publicizing the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.[33] WHIG's existence and membership was first identified in a Washington Post article by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus on August 10, 2003; members of WHIG included Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio, and communication strategists Mary Matalin, Karen Hughes, and James R. Wilkinson.

Quoting one of WHIG's members without identifying him or her by name, the Washington Post explained that the task force's mission was to “educate the public” about the threat posed by Saddam and (in the reporters' words) “to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad.” Rove's "strategic communications" task force within WHIG helped write and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing in September 2002 the theme of Iraq's purported nuclear threat.[34]

The White House Iraq Group was “little known” until a subpoena for its notes, email, and attendance records was issued by CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald in January 2004, a legal move first reported in the press and acknowledged by the White House on March 5, 2004.[33][35]

Allegations of conflict of interest
In March 2001, Rove met with executives from Intel and successfully advocated a merger between a Dutch company and an Intel company supplier. Rove owned $100,000 in Intel stock at the time but had been advised by Fred Fielding, the White House's transition counsel, to defer selling the stock in January to obtain ethics panel approval. Rove offered no advice on the merger which needed to be approved by a joint Pentagon-Treasury Department panel since it would give a foreign company access to sensitive military technology.[36] In June 2001, Rove met with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove held almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks. On June 30, 2001, Rove divested his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each of Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer. The same day, the White House confirmed reports that Rove had been involved in administration energy policy meetings while at the same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron.

Criticized "liberal response" to 9/11
At a fund-raiser in New York City for the Conservative Party of New York State in June 2005, Rove said, "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Democrats demanded Rove's resignation or an apology, and pointed out that every Democrat in the Senate voted for military force against Al-Qaeda in retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States; however they got neither.[37][38]

Families Of September 11, an organization founded in October 2001 by families of some of those who died in the terrorist attack, requested Rove "stop trying to reap political gain in the tragic misfortune of others". [39] In contrast, the Bush administration characterized Rove's comments as "very accurate" and stated that the calls for an apology were "somewhat puzzling", since he was "simply pointing out the different philosophies when it comes to winning the War on Terrorism."[40][41]

2004 George W. Bush presidential campaign
Bush publicly thanked Rove and called him "the architect" in his 2004 victory speech, after defeating John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.[42]

During the campaign, critics alleged that Rove had professional ties to the producers of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth television ads that criticized Kerry's Vietnam-era military service and public testimony against American soldiers, although no evidence of Rove's direct involvement was ever produced.[43]

A few months after the election, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) publicly alleged that Rove engineered the Killian documents controversy during the 2004 campaign, by planting fake anti-Bush documents with CBS News to deflect attention from Bush's service record during the Vietnam War. Other than Rove's supposed motive, however, no evidence supporting this speculation has ever been publicized. Rove himself has denied any involvement, and Hinchey himself admitted he had no evidence to support this claim.[44],[45]

Plame affair
Main article: Plame affair
On August 29, 2003, retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV claimed that Rove leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee,[46] allegedly in retaliation for Wilson's op-ed in The New York Times in which he criticized the Bush administration's citation of the yellowcake documents among the justifications for the War in Iraq enumerated in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address. It was revealed that Wilson's wife was not a CIA field operative, but rather had a position working solely at CIA headquarters in the United States.

On June 13, 2006, prosecutors determined there was no reason to charge Rove with any wrongdoing.[47] Fitzgerald stated previously that "very rarely do you bring a charge in a case that's going to be tried in which you ever end a grand jury investigation. I can tell you that the substantial bulk of the work of this investigation is concluded." In late August 2006 it became known that Richard L. Armitage was responsible for the leak. The investigation led to felony charges being filed against Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Eventually, Libby was found guilty by a jury. One juror announced that she felt that Libby was being used as a scapegoat and wondered why Rove himself wasn't charged.[48] Washinton Post columnist and Prize-winning political reporter David Broder called on the more vocal members of the media who were hyping Rove's involvement to apologize to him. .[49]

Rove's email to Hadley
In an email sent by Rove to top White House security official Stephen Hadley immediately after his July 11, 2003 discussion with Matt Cooper, Rove claimed that he tried to steer Cooper away from allegations Wilson was making about faulty Iraq intelligence. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming", Rove wrote to Hadley. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." Rove made no mention to Hadley in the e-mail of having leaked Plame's CIA identity, nor of having revealed classified information to a reporter, nor of having told the reporter that certain sensitive information would soon be declassified.[50] Although Rove wrote to Hadley (and perhaps testified) that the initial subject of his conversation with Cooper was welfare reform and that Cooper turned the conversation to Wilson and the Niger mission, Cooper disputed this suggestion in his grand jury testimony and subsequent statements: "I can't find any record of talking about [welfare reform] with him on July 11 [2003], and I don't recall doing so", Cooper said.[51]

Karl Rove revealed as one source of TIME article
Wikinews has related news:
Karl Rove named as a source of Plame leakOn July 10, 2005, Newsweek posted a story from its July 18 print edition which quoted one of the e-mails written by Time reporter Matthew Cooper in the days following the publication of Wilson's op-ed piece.[52] Writing to TIME bureau chief Michael Duffy on July 11, 2003, three days before Novak's column was published, Cooper recounted a two-minute conversation with Karl Rove "on double super secret background" in which Rove said that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee: "it was, KR [Karl Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip". In a TIME article released July 17, 2005, Cooper says Rove ended his conversation by saying "I've already said too much."

In addition, Rove told Cooper that CIA Director George Tenet did not authorize Wilson's trip to Niger, and that "not only the genesis of the trip [to Niger] is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report" which Wilson made upon his return from Africa. Rove "implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger", gave Cooper a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson". Cooper recommended that his bureau chief assign a reporter to contact the CIA for further confirmation, and indicated that the tip should not be sourced to Rove or even to the White House.

Cooper testified before a grand jury on July 13, 2005, confirming that Rove was the source who told him Wilson's wife was an employee of the CIA. In the July 17, 2005 TIME article detailing his grand jury testimony, Cooper wrote that Rove never used Plame's name nor indicated that she had covert status, although Rove did apparently convey that certain information relating to her was classified: "As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which,... [but] was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me."[51]

On August 13, 2005, journalist Murray Waas reported that Justice Department and FBI officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding from FBI investigators his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall.[53]

Following the revelations in the Libby indictment, sixteen former CIA and military intelligence officials urged Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance for his part in outing CIA officer Valerie Plame.[54]

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, told reporters on June 13, 2006 that he had received notification from Fitzgerald indicating that Rove would not be charged with any crimes in the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity, effectively ending the matter for Rove.

On May 12, 2006, freelance journalist Jason Leopold, writing for Truthout, claimed that Rove had been served with an indictment: "[Fitzgerald] instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 [business] hours to get his affairs in order."[55] This was met by a categorical denial from a Rove spokesman. Rumors of Rove's possible impending indictment swirled through the blogosphere multiple times in the spring of 2006.

On July 11, 2005, Novak said that Rove had discussed Plame with him. On July 15, Rove's lawyers said that Rove told Novak he had "heard that, too", in reference to Plame's status as a CIA employee, but was unaware at the time of the name "Valerie Plame". Rove claims to have learned of her name from his conversation with Novak.[56]

On July 13, 2006, Plame sued Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others, accusing them of conspiring to destroy her career.[57]

2006 Congressional elections and beyond
On October 24, 2006, two weeks before the Congressional election, in an interview with National Public Radio's Robert Siegel, Rove insisted that his insider polling data forecast Republican retention of both houses:

SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.
ROVE: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.
SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races...
ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to the math.[58]
In the election the Democrats won both houses of Congress. The White House Bulletin, published by Bulletin News, cited rumors of Rove's impending departure from the White House staff: "'Karl represents the old style and he’s got to go if the Democrats are going to believe Bush’s talk of getting along,' said a key Bush advisor."[59] However, while allowing that many Republican members of Congress are "resentful of the way he and the White House conducted the losing campaign", the New York Times also stated that, "White House officials say President Bush has every intention of keeping Mr. Rove on through the rest of his term."[60]

Prior to the election, Rove voiced impatience with the notion that his own reputation is on the ballot. He told the Washington Post, "I understand some will see the election as a judgment on me, but the fact of the matter is that, look what has been set in motion -- a broader, deeper, strengthened Republican Party, and with an emphasis on grass-roots neighbor-to-neighbor politics, is going to continue."[61] After the election, Rove continued to express optimism, telling the Post, "The Republican philosophy is alive and well and likely to reemerge in the majority in 2008." Rove also told the Post that the GOP election strategy was working until the Mark Foley scandal put the Republican campaign "back on its heels." Rove added "We were on a roll, and [the Foley scandal] stopped it.... It revived all the stuff about Jack Abramoff and added to it."

In Rove's analysis, 10 of the 28 House seats Republicans lost were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six, he said, were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the threat. Rove argued that, without corruption and complacency, Republicans could have kept narrow control of the House regardless of Bush's troubles and the war.[62]

In analyzing the results of the 2006 midterm election, Rove told Time, "The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected ... Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass... Iraq mattered, but it was more frustration than it was an explicit call for withdrawal. If this was a get-out-now call for withdrawal, then Lamont would not have been beaten by Lieberman. Iraq does play a role, but not the critical, central role." Again, Rove expressed optimism for the future of the Republican Party (GOP), and defended the role of the Republican get-out-the-vote program he helped invent. He told Time, "I see this as much more of a transient, passing thing.... [T]he Republican Party remains at its core a small-government, low-tax, limit-spending, traditional-values, strong-defense party. I see the power of the ideas, even in a tough year.... People were talking 35, 40 or more and it didn't happen. There were a number of elections which were supposed to be close and ended up not being close."[63] He added that he has "fundamental confidence in the power of the underlying agenda of this President", and cited fighting the war on terror, tax cuts, immigration, welfare, and legal reform, reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, reducing trade barriers, restrained spending.

In the January 29, 2007 issue of Newsweek, GOP activist Grover Norquist described how Rove showed up at a weekly meeting of influential D.C. conservatives early in the month, surprising attendees with his bubbly demeanor after weeks of rumors that he might be headed out. Norquist was quoted as saying "I think some people had given him up for dead, but he was good old Karl, upbeat and enthusiastic." At the meeting Rove previewed Bush's final two years in office, saying Social Security reform was likely off the table and that Iraq and the economy would be the biggest issues for 2008. "I don't know anyone who holds him personally responsible for what happened to us in the election", said a GOP national committee member, who declined to be named talking about the inner circle. "But his stature isn't quite the same." According to Newsweek, "behind the scenes, according to administration officials (anonymous in order to discuss White House matters), Rove has been laying the groundwork for Bush's State of the Union address and mulling how the GOP can regain momentum in 2008.... Rove has been busy trying to find common ground with Dems, organizing two meetings between Bush and the Blue Dog Democrats, a coalition of conservative lawmakers who offer the White House its best chance at compromise with the new Congress. Rove also sat in on many of Bush's meetings with members of Congress in recent weeks about Iraq."[64]

Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys
Dismissal of U.S. Attorneys Controversy ( v • d • e )
Articles
Main issues
Timeline
Summary of attorneys
Documents
Congressional hearings
List of Dismissed Attorneys
Complete list of related articles

Administration Officials Involved
Fred F. Fielding, White House Counsel
William K. Kelley, Deputy White House Counsel
William Moschella, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General
Brett Tolman, U.S. Attorney, District of Utah, former counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee
Involved Administration Officials that Resigned
Alberto Gonzales, United States Attorney General, former White House Counsel
Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General
Michael A. Battle, Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
Michael Elston, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General
Monica Goodling, Justice Department's liaison to the White House
William W. Mercer, U.S. Attorney, Acting Associate Attorney General (retains position as U.S. Attorney in Montana)
Sara Taylor, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs
Paul McNulty, Deputy Attorney General
Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel (resigned prior to publicity surrounding the controversy, effective January 31, 2007)
Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff
Bradley Schlozman, Director Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys; former Acting Assistant Attorney General for, and later Pricipal Deputy Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division; former interim U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri

U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Patrick Leahy, Chair (D)
Arlen Specter, Ranking member, former Chair (R)
Chuck Schumer, Chair: Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts (D)

U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary
John Conyers, Chair (D)
Lamar Smith, Ranking member (R)
Linda Sánchez, Chair: Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law (D)

Main article: Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy
Allen Weh, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House aid for Rove, asking that Iglesias be removed.[65] Then in 2006 Rove personally told Weh “He’s gone,” Rove said.[65] Weh was dissatisfied with Iglesias due in part to his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation. Weh followed up with, "There’s nothing we’ve done that’s wrong."[65] The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, has said that Rove "wasn’t involved in who was going to be fired or hired."[65]

According to Newsweek, Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, developed the list of eight prosecutors to be fired last October, with input from the White House.[66]

Timothy Griffin, a former Rove aide, was the a replacement for fired attorney Henry Cummins.[67] Specifically, Sampson sent an email that stated "The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc." Later in the e-mail, Sampson wrote that home-state senators may resist replacing prosecutors "they recommended. That said, if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I."[68]

On March 14, 2007 former U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald said he believes Rove was trying to influence the selection in reaction to pressure from Rep. Dennis Hastert, then speaker of the House, and allies of then-Gov. George Ryan, who knew Fitzgerald was seeking someone from outside Illinois to attack political corruption.[69]

In emails released by Congress on March 15, 2007, Rove raised the idea of firing all 93 Attorneys in early January 2005. [70]

On July 26, 2007, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that the committee was issuing a subpoena for Rove to appear personally before the committee and testify, following the testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the U.S. Attorney dismissal controversy and other matters.[71]

E-mail scandal
Main article: Bush White House e-mail controversy
Due to investigations into White House staffers' e-mail communication related to the controversy over the dismissal of United States Attorneys, it was discovered that many White House staff members, including Rove, had exchanged documents using Republican National Committee e-mail servers such as gwb43.com[72], or personal e-mail accounts with third party providers such as BlackBerry[73], considered a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Over 500 of Rove's emails were mistakenly sent to a parody web site, who forwarded them to an investigative reporter[74].

Investigation by the Office of Special Counsel
On April 24, 2007, it was revealed that Rove is being investigated by the Office of Special Counsel for his involvement in the email scandal, the firing of US attorneys, and for "improper political influence over government decision-making."[75] In response to this investigation and other pending complaints, 2004 Democratic candidate for U.S. Vice President and current 2008 presidential hopeful John Edwards initiated a petition drive calling for Bush to fire Rove.[76] After Rove announced his resignation, Edwards' reply was "good riddance" [77].

Don Siegelman's conviction controversies
Former Democratic Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman[78] was convicted in 2006 of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. However, many people believed he was a victim of politically-directed trial led by Karl Rove. Siegelman, who very narrowly lost re-election in 2002 to Republican Representative Bob Riley, was considered by Republicans as the most serious opponent for Riley in 2006 election, because of his popularity and record as Governor (Siegelman was defeated in the Democratic primary by Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley, who went on to lose to Riley by a wide margin in November).

There are rumors that the U. S. Department of Justice and Rove, as chief GOP political strategist, manipulated the court and the prosecution of Siegelman to destroy him politically.[79]

Resignation from the White House
In a Wall Street Journal interview published on August 13, 2007, Rove revealed that he would resign from the Administration effective August 31. Having originally floated the idea of resigning in mid-2006, Rove opted to stay with the White House through the 2006 mid-term elections and a number of policy debates in the first half of 2007. The resignation falls prior to the Labor Day deadline, set by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton, for any senior aides wishing to leave the administration prior to the end of President Bush's second term. In a statement, he said, "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family".[80] Rove is expected to return to Texas following his resignation. He has indicated that he may write a book detailing his career in politics.

Religious views
In their book The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, James Moore and Wayne Slater identify Rove as an agnostic.[81] Slater reaffirmed this claim in a National Public Radio interview.[82] According to Bill Moyers, Rove was a "skeptic" and a "secular manipulator" who had used members of the Christian right for partisan purposes.[83] However, in an interview by Chris Wallace on Fox News, Rove denied being an agnostic, saying "I'm a Christian. I go to church. I'm an Episcopalian."

Miscellaneous comments about and by Rove in the media
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Karl RoveOn December 8, 2004, Rove was named by Barbara Walters as the "Most Fascinating Person" of the year.[84]
On January 19, 2005, Rove said George W. Bush was "one of the most intellectually gifted presidents we've had."[85]
"You know," Rove told Debra Saunders in an August 2007 telephone interview after he announced his resignation, "you'd be shocked and surprised to learn how much the president reached out to Democrats."[86]
George W. Bush has referred to Rove as "The Boy Genius," "The Architect", and "Turd Blossom",[87] a Texan term for a flower that grows from a pile of cow dung.[88]
He has often been referred to as "Bush's Brain".[89]
His unique take on political strategy has inspired journalists to coin the term "Rovism". "All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all. Reality is what you say it is, ..." - Neal Gabler, Los Angeles Times[90]
Rove is a Norwegian-American. According to Bob Woodward's recent book, Rove is obsessed with the "historical duplicity" of the Swedes, who seized Norway back in 1814. According to Woodward, this nationalism manifested itself as hatred for Swedish weapons inspector Hans Blix.[citation needed]
Sarah Vowell wrote in Assassination Vacation that one of Rove's heroes is Mark Hanna, President William McKinley's political adviser.[citation needed]
The 2004 political documentary Bush's Brain "…depicts Rove as the most powerful political consultant in American history and, in essence, a co-president" according to USA Today's South by Southwest film festival review.[91]
An episode (Deacon Stan, Jesus Man) of the FOX-TV animated satire, American Dad, depicted Rove as a shadowy figure clad in a red robe and cowl; bears a strong resemblance to Palpatine, the iconic villain from the Star Wars series. Whenever his name is said a wolf howls; when he tries to enter a church, he begins to burn and emits smoke. He has messages delivered to him on scrolls by bats and he later departed the scene by transforming into a colony of bats.
The short-lived television show That's My Bush depicted Rove as a scheming political advisor to President Bush, playing the 'straight man' to George and Laura Bush, who were portrayed as over-the-top dimwits. [citation needed]
On November 17, 2006, Australian Opposition Leader Kim Beazley offered his condolences to the family of Belinda Emmett on the day of her funeral. However, instead of referring to Emmett's widower Rove McManus, Beazley mistakenly offered condolences to Karl Rove.[92][93]
On March 29, 2007, Rove was persuaded to participate in an improvised rap song at a Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington by improvisors Brad Sherwood and Colin Mochrie of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame. A video of the event, showing Rove attempting to dance to the rap and referring to himself as "MC Rove" has since spread on the Internet. At the event, Rove also made fun of the claim that he is the epitome of evil, stating that his hobbies, besides stamp collecting, included ripping off the heads of animals.[94][95]
When discussing his new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens was asked by New York Magazine if "anyone in the Bush administration confided in [him] about being an atheist?", he replied, "Well, I don’t talk that much to them — maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”[96]
In one edition of the comic Opus, Karl Rove tells an Animal Control worker for saying "Fat Bushy Cats" (Rove thought he said "Fatcat Bushies", but it didn't matter to him). He then fires Opus as a hedge trimmer for having a sign that says "Caution: Bush Whacking". The Animal Control worker then states "Karl Rove is out of control!"
An article published on August 31, 2007, in "The Onion" parodies the Rove-Bush relationship.[1]