Karl and Me

A new book on Karl Rove, Machiavelli's Shadow by Paul Alexander, recalls a personal experience I had with George W. Bush's political guru. I had forgotten that I talked to the author until reading this excerpt from a review of the book on the Washington Examiner's web site:

"CQ's Craig Crawford recalls this moment from 1999, when Crawford was editing National Journal's Hotline: 'I thought Bush was called Bush Junior,' Crawford told Alexander.'So, at Hotline, because we needed a device in our headlines to delineate him from Bush Senior, we were just calling him Bush Junior. Well, one day I picked up the phone and there was this person screaming at me on the other end. It was just nonstop yelling. It was Karl Rove and I mean he tore my head off over our calling Bush Bush Junior.'"

All true. I haven't seen the book yet and don't know whether Alexander included this detail: It was the only time I ever talked to Rove. His rudeness in the conversation described above caused me to decide that life is too short to ever again waste time talking to such a jerk.

That was a lucky move. Had I courted Rove as a source, as so many of my colleagues did, I might have had to hire a lawyer, or worse -- as so many of my colleagues experienced in the CIA leak case.

Craig blogs daily at Trail Mix on CQ Politics.