Karl Rove: I Did Not Want Dick Cheney To Be Vice President (VIDEO)

Karl Rove, chief adviser to former President George W. Bush, didn't want Dick Cheney to be Bush's running mate, he said in a CNN interview Thursday.

"He was set on Cheney for vice president, and I thought it was a bad idea," Rove told CNN's John King in an interview on "John King, USA" at 7 p.m.

Rove told King that he argued to Bush that the campaign did not need "Wyoming's three electoral votes" and would be better off not worrying about "Cheney's voting record, and Cheney's health, and the fact he'd been Bush 41's Secretary of Defense - and we were trying to develop a separate image for 43," Rove continued.

Cheney, himself, seemed reluctant to take the position, according to Rove's book released earlier this month. In Rove's memoir, "Courage and Consequence," he wrote that he had seen Cheney "squirm as Bush pressed him to accept" the vice-presidential selection.

"Cheney had a clear understanding of what John Nance Garner, FDR's first vice president, had said about the office -- that it was 'not worth a bucket of warm piss,'" Rove wrote, but "Cheney was too much of a patriot to act on that knowledge."

Watch Rove's interview on CNN's "John King, USA":

Comments

[Atlanta Dave]

09:44 AM on 04/19/2010

Dick Cheney didn't want to be VP, but he had no choice, because PNAC had already decided. Before you dismiss this posting, go to newamericancentury.org and read the plans for invading Iraq and removing Saddam, plans that were written in 1998. Every lying, torturing war criminal and their enablers are all to be found there, laying out in multiple essays exactly what they plan to do once they take over the White House and Congress, including proving to the world that we can fight two wars on two fronts simultaneously. The organization's principles are stated and co-signed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Perle, all of whom, with their Dick, moved into the Bush Administration and waited for a chance to launch their war plans on the world. Now I'm supposed to believe that Cheney was Bush's choice alone. Hah. Hah. Hah. And all the rest of the guys who launched their crusade for American empire just happened to wind up in the Bush administration, too. Wow, what an amazing coincidence. Go sell your fetid revision somewhere else, Karl. Tell it to Fox News and the teabaggers. For anyone willing to read, the horrible, bloody, expensive facts speak for themselves.

[Ian Seine]

12:45 PM on 03/29/2010

Rove wanted Jeff Gannon for V.P. --- so did GW Bush.
But they both realized that only a "back door" role would be available for Gannon.

[techcafe]

05:00 AM on 03/29/2010

could it be that Cheney & Rove are on a desperate mission to revise history - before the hammer falls?

[Lahonda]

04:06 PM on 03/27/2010

Cheney didn't want to be VP either... he wanted the presidency but knew he couldn't move the populace without the Bush name. Dubya was his marionette.

[Gudrun]

02:55 PM on 03/27/2010

Too late, Rove, nothing you say can make us love you now.

[kitvancleave]

01:44 PM on 03/27/2010

That's what you say today, Karl. Do you think we believe ANYTHING any of y'all say these days?

[tompoe]

01:13 PM on 03/27/2010

Rove is a war criminal. Cheney is a war criminal. Corporate media is a war criminal enabler.

[AbeMartin]

09:17 AM on 03/27/2010

So, Dear and Blessed Leader's Rasputin is trying to continue to re-write history to burnish the (snicker, snicker) legacy of administrative pretension and pretending that eroded a budget surplus, enriched already rich friends and relatives, embroiled the US in a $1trillion dollar and counting Iraq war to secure oil leases for DBL's friends in big oil, dismantled already weak federal regulations of the food and drug industry, environment, banking, let New Orleans and the Gulf Coast rot in the aftermath of Katrina, dragged the US into unilateral renouncing treaties, condoned torture, etc. etc.

Rove didn't approve of Dick Cheney????????? Right. Next week Karl Rove will announce that Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Doug Fieth, Condoleeza Rice, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez, Harriet Meier etc., were never actually part of the administration. That their participation was all a Democratic/Socialist trick to discredit him and Du(m)bya.

[nualak]

02:29 AM on 03/28/2010

Well said.

[1differentdrummer]

05:20 AM on 03/27/2010

So who cares what Rove thought or wanted?

[BaltoJim]

11:27 PM on 03/26/2010

C'mon, does anyone actually believe Rove? Seriously??? He's just trying to put himself in a better light. This way he can imply that Bush meant well but was mistaken in choosing Cheney as VP, while distancing himself from Cheney at the same time. And as a bonus, Cheney didn't REALLY want to be the VP, but did it for his country because he's such a "patriot"!

[MarkInTexas]

11:03 PM on 03/26/2010

...the re-writing of history continues.

[One more Thing]

12:03 AM on 03/27/2010

I am just waiting for Rove's revelations about his own gonads.

[jcyoung]

09:47 PM on 03/26/2010

Such a patriot that he had 5 deferments during the Vietnam War. Of course, as he stated, he did have other priorities...who didn't?

[Evanescence1]

09:35 PM on 03/26/2010

Too damnn late isn't it?

[exileinla]

08:11 PM on 03/26/2010

I *hope* that I live long enough to see Rove go to jail...After all, they are *still* hauling in the Nazi's, another bunch of war criminals. Just this week they brought in an assassin.

[longfeltwant]

09:41 PM on 03/26/2010

Nazi's what?

[jqcitizen]

04:53 PM on 03/26/2010

The fact that the country took a nose-dive, into near bankruptcy, under Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft-Wolfowitz-A corrupt banking system-Rubber stamp congress ........etc. Is not so much a fault of the citizens that voted in the 2000 election, as it was the decision of the Supreme Court to anoint this crowd into power in the first place.

Rove and all of them can write books. I am just glad that era of misery is getting behind us.

Now, get these wars over with and get people back to work. Workers pay taxes and the US Treasury is more broke than our unemployed citizens.