By: E&P Staff When he publicly broke with his former boss, President Bush, it made the front-page of The New York Times. Now neither the president nor Karl Rove speak to him, but Matthew Dowd is not backing off.
In a major piece by the Times' Mark Z. Barabak, Dowd, a top political operative for the Bush team in 2000 and 2004,
continued his critique of the Iraq war, declaring, "I guess somebody would make the argument, 'Well, the Iraq war was about defending ourselves.' But it seems an awfully huge stretch these days to say that."
The White House had hit his earlier criticism as "emotional," because he had a son awaiting deployment.
An excerpt from the article, which is at www.latimes.com, follows.
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"When you're a public advocate of something in the high-profile way that I was, and all of a sudden it doesn't turn out the way you thought, the counterweight is not to just sit quietly and let it go," Dowd said. "I had to say something in a high-profile way."
His disenchantment with Bush built over several years. Dowd went public at a UC Berkeley seminar on the 2006 California governor's race; Dowd was a senior adviser to the Republican National Committee, where he landed after Bush took office, and a top strategist for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election campaign. It was a question about the president that set off Dowd and, looking back, liberated him.
"Do you lose sleep at night knowing that you gave this country probably the worst administration we've ever had?" asked a young man. "I mean, have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?"
Dowd tensed and leaned forward. Rather than defend Bush, he spoke of his son, an Army language specialist then facing deployment to Iraq....
Dowd now sees the confrontation as "a gift (that) gave me the opportunity to start expressing things more and more publicly....
"I don't hate the guy," he said of the president, who has not spoken with Dowd since he aired his views. "I don't think he's evil or bad. I think he's a good person that didn't accomplish what he set out to do."
Dowd said he heard secondhand that Bush was hurt by his criticism. Asked if he would like to resume their relationship, Dowd paused.
"Sure, I'd like to visit with him," he said. "It would be a nice thing to do at some point. But I don't feel a necessity to do it to settle something in myself."
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