Rove Strategy Paper Found in Nixon Archive

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Rove Strategy Paper Found in Nixon Archive

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: July 14, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/washington/14rove.html?ex=1342065600&en=de69eb504267a61e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

WASHINGTON, July 13 — The year was 1973, and Karl Rove was looking for help — from the Nixon White House.

Tucked away inside 78,000 pages of documents from the Nixon administration, released by the National Archives earlier this week, is a little gem: a strategy memorandum from the man who would go on to become the architect of President Bush’s rise to political power.

Mr. Rove, then a 22-year-old aide on Capitol Hill, was planning a run to become chairman of the College Republicans, a position he would ultimately win twice. So he wrote to Anne Armstrong, then counselor to Nixon. Mrs. Armstrong had been co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, and therefore Mr. Rove’s ultimate boss the previous year when he was executive director of the college group.

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In his memorandum, Mr. Rove offered suggestions, from having college Republican clubs show “nonpolitical films for fund-raising (e.g. John Wayne flicks, ‘Reefer Madness’)” to developing a “Student Guide to Lobbying” with a “forward by Bush/Nixon.” That, of course, would be the elder George Bush, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, through whom Mr. Rove first met the current occupant of the White House.

Mr. Rove’s memorandum also proposes building a group of “New Federalism Advocates,” modeled on “Friends of Nixon,” a Nixon campaign committee. The group would have representatives from each state who, Mr. Rove suggested, could meet in Washington for “extensive briefings” with top administration officials like John D. Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman.