1 Boring Old Man

Book Tells Of Dissent In Bush’s Inner Circle
White House Granted Author Unusual Access

Karl Rove told George W. Bush before the 2000 election that it was a bad idea to name Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, and Rove later raised objections to the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, according to a new book on the Bush presidency. In Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush, journalist Robert Draper writes that Rove told Bush he should not tap Cheney for the Republican ticket: "Selecting Daddy’s top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick — it was needy." But Bush did not care — he was comfortable with Cheney and "saw no harm in giving his VP unprecedented run of the place."

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Several of Bush’s top advisers believe that the president’s view of postwar Iraq was significantly affected by his meeting with three Iraqi exiles in the Oval Office several months before the 2003 invasion, Draper reports. He writes that all three exiles agreed without qualification that "Iraq would greet American forces with enthusiasm. Ethnic and religious tensions would dissolve with the collapse of Saddam’s regime. And democracy would spring forth with little effort – particularly in light of Bush’s commitment to rebuild the country."