Karl Rove Dinner

05 Apr, 2010 by Kathleen McKinley

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I’m trying to read Karl Rove’s book,”Courage and Consequence” quickly so I can give you my take on it. So far, it is utterly fascinating. But I did want to briefly tell you about the dinner I went to Thursday night where he was the keynote speaker. I briefly got to shake Rove’s hand. He was anxious to get home and after what happened to him earlier in the week, I could see why.

These are the things that stood out for me in the speech. He said that Pres. Bush met with the family of a fallen soldier every single week of his Presidency since 2002, without letting the media know. Rove said that the last week that Rove was working at the White House they had a meeting with a family that had lost a son in the war, and had another son entering the Marines as well. It was that family that changed Rove’s outlook looking back. At the end of these meetings Rove said Pres. Bush would ask if there was anything he could do for the families. This time the father spoke up and said that he was an orthopedic surgeon and he wanted to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan with the military, but he was too old. He was 61. He wanted an age waiver. Long story short, he got one after passing basic training (actually blowing the younger men out of the water as well). He was a wealthy man who shut down his well to do practice, his million dollar home, and took his wife to a small apartment in San Diego to train and then left her, along with his remaining son, to go to the Middle East. Rove said he thought a lot about all the sacrifices this family made. He thought about all they gave up. He thought about how the wife had encouraged it all. He thought about how much this family loved this country. So much love to give so much, to give up so much. He still stays in touch with them. He had just had dinner a few days before with the wife and the son. He was visibly moved telling the story.

Before I go into the last thing that struck me in the speech, I know all the stories about Rove that you have heard, and the left repeats over and over. Come back and read my review. You will be as surprised as I was at the fact that most of what you think is true, is not.

Anyway, he said that after the election of Pres. Obama, he was speaking at a University in Memphis, and had mentioned that the election was historic. A 20 yr old student stood up and asked why Rove thought it was historic. Rove said (this isn’t an exact quote, but pretty close. I wrote it down) because 3 miles from here a bigot shot Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 thinking he could stop civil rights. And now in 2010 we have the first African American President. We may not agree with him on the issues, but it is “a wonderful thing.”

Which is exactly how I felt about it.

There are tons of fascinating and interesting things in this book so far. I’ll share them with you this week. So stay tuned.