Rove: My ‘Worst’ Mistake Was ‘Saying Something Unkind’ To A Colleague

[CatWoman]

Today, Karl Rove gave a media interview at an IHOP in Waco, Texas. During that interview, he says that now is not the “time for regrets.” The one instance he concedes was a mistake was when he said “something unkind” to a co-worker:

He was alternately emotional and nostalgic, clinical and unbowed, but rarely introspective, saying, “There will be time for regrets; there will be things that I didn’t do as well as I should have, there will be things that I’ve left undone.”

He only described one regret in particular: “I remember having a conversation with a colleague — I want to say not only a colleague, but a very close friend — and responding out of frustration at the end of a seemingly long, continuing dialogue that turned into an argument, and saying something unkind, and it was the worst I ever felt at the White House. I later apologized to him for it.”

Rove expressed a similar lack of introspection in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. When asked about his mistakes, he said, “I’ll put my feet up in September and think about that.”

According to the New York Times write-up of the interview, Rove never once mentions the Iraq war, which he promoted as a member of the White House Iraq Group. Nor does he address his role in leaking the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Regarding the U.S. attorney scandal — in which he helped draw up the list of fired prosecutors — he simply states, “Everything was handled appropriately.”

Disappointingly, the closest he comes to actually revealing any differences with President Bush is admitting that he thinks that Barney, the President’s Scottish terrier, “is a lump.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/18/rove-interview-regrets/