[Texan Matthew Dowd worked closely with Karl Rove to help Bush get elected in 2000 and 2004. He became disillusioned with the Bush administration and began to speak out publicly against it.]
Matthew Dowd was part of Bush's political inner circle, enjoying a degree of power and intimacy that made his criticism all the more unexpected-- and hurtful to those still close to the president, many of whom are Dowd's friends....
His disenchantment with the president built over several years. Dowd went public at a Berkeley seminar on the 2006 California governor's race; Dowd was both a senior advisor to the Republican National Committee... and a top strategist for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection effort. It was a question about the president that set Dowd off 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 the oldest of his three sons, 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....
"If you really want to know where I'm at, it's understanding now that the people that have had the most profound effect on the world... are basically people who walked out their front door and acted right."
--From an interview with Matthew Dowd (1961-) by Mark Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 14 November 2007
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