Success Quote by Fred Barnes

Barnes opens with a neat bit of media judo: accuse the “mainstream media” of melodrama, then position himself as the sober adult in the room. The move is classic partisan counterprogramming. If reporters are “tempted” to read Rove’s shift as a demotion, Barnes implies, that’s not analysis; it’s craving for a narrative. He doesn’t just defend Rove, he delegitimizes the interpretive authority of the press corps that might embarrass him.

The subtext is less about job titles than about power’s real geography. “Deputy White House chief of staff” sounds like influence; Barnes insists influence doesn’t live in org charts. By reframing a formal downgrade as liberation, he translates bureaucratic retreat into strategic elevation. The key verb is “freed”: leaving governance-adjacent management is presented as escape from busywork, a return to the pure essence of Rove-ism - message discipline, wedge issues, turnout math, the long game of electoral advantage.

Context matters: the Bush years normalized the idea that campaigning never ends, that “big issues” are raw material for “strategies to win elections.” Barnes fuses the two without blinking, treating it as common sense that shaping policy is inseparable from shaping voter perception. That conflation is the point. The quote isn’t merely pro-Rove; it’s pro-machine, endorsing a model of politics where the highest function of governing is to produce winnable narratives. If it reads like spin, that’s because it’s an argument about why spin should run the show.