Politics & Power Quote by Karl Rove

Rove’s line is less a comment on judicial philosophy than a tactical reframing of Obama’s stated values. By putting “empathy” and “understanding” in scare quotes, he doesn’t just dispute the president’s criteria; he implies they’re a kind of marketing language, a sentimental cover story for something more ideologically aggressive. The sentence works by swapping a soft civic virtue for a hard partisan label, then treating the swap as an unmasking.

The specific intent is to delegitimize the concept of empathy as a qualification for the Court by recoding it as code. In Rove’s telling, “empathy” isn’t a lens for seeing how law affects lived experience; it’s a backdoor for outcomes-driven judging. “Liberal, activist” is doing heavy lifting here: “liberal” cues base polarization, while “activist” suggests judges who invent rights, override voters, and treat the Constitution as optional. It’s a two-word shortcut to distrust.

The subtext is a warning about power. Supreme Court nominations are one of the few presidential acts with generational reach, and Rove’s phrasing tries to raise the stakes: this isn’t about temperament or fairness, it’s about remaking the country without passing laws. That plays especially well in moments when Democrats emphasize equity or systemic harms, because it lets opponents argue that compassion is being weaponized into policy.

The context is the post-Bush, post-culture-war judiciary fight, when “empathy” became a flashpoint after Obama’s remarks about judges understanding “what it’s like to be poor.” Rove’s move is to turn that into a liability: if a nominee admits to feeling, they’re already guilty of deciding.