Moore, James 1951-

(James C. Moore)

PERSONAL: Born 1951.

CAREER: Writer, journalist. Former television news correspondent. Has appeared on television and radio programs, including the Today Show, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), American Morning, Cable News Network (CNN), Real Time with Bill Maher, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Microsoft-National Broadcasting Company (MSNBC), CBS Evening News, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Morning Edition, National Public Radio (NPR), and Air America Radio.

AWARDS, HONORS: Emmy Award; Edward R. Murrow Award, Radio Television News Director’s Association; Individual Broadcast Achievement Award, Texas Headliner’s Foundation.

WRITINGS

NONFICTION

(With Wayne Slater) Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, John Wiley (New York, NY), 2003.

Bush’s War for Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People, John Wiley (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Wayne Slater) The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, Crown (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Wayne Slater) Rove Exposed: How Bush’s Brain Fooled America, John Wiley (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of Web log, James Moore, found on The Huffington Post Web site.

ADAPTATIONS: Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential was adapted for a documentary film, 2004, by BB Productions, directed by Michael Paradies Shoob and Joseph Mealey.

SIDELIGHTS: James Moore is a former television journalist and the author of several hard-hitting nonfiction books on the presidency of George W. Bush and his chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Working with journalist Wayne Slater, Moore published the 2003 Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, an examination of how Rove took a reluctant and unprepared candidate, in the opinion of the authors, and turned him into the president of the United States. According to Moore and Slater, Rove’s use of wedge issues was a major part of his election strategy. For example, Rove focused attention on West Virginia, a usual Democratic stronghold, but a state where hunters and mine workers were at odds with the environmental and gun-control policies of the previous Democratic administration. Bush campaigned hard in the state opposing those policies and as a result was able to capture its five electoral votes, which were desperately needed in the close election of 2000. Writing in the libertarian magazine Reason, John F. Pitney, Jr., felt that Moore’s analysis of the West Virginia case was “the only good thing” about Bush’s Brain, which otherwise Pitney found to be a “mess,” a book that “relies overmuch on uneducated speculation.” Other reviewers had a far more positive assessment of Bush’s Brain, however, and its analysis of Rove’s influence. Rove, as Moore and Slater portray him, has only one idea: winning. To that end he will sacrifice conviction and the truth. Mick Hume, writing in the New Statesman noted, “This book provides a detailed insider account of how Rove guided Bush through the Republican primaries and the presidential campaign.”USA Today Magazine reviewer Gerald F. Kreyche felt it “is not unfair to characterize the work as muckraking,” in the positive sense of such investigative journalism. Kreyche continued: “One almost has the impression that the authors strongly dislike Rove, but admire his successes, reluctantly giving the devil his due.” Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Nicholas Confessore called the same book a “trenchant chronicle.”

Working on his own, Moore wrote the 2004 Bush’s War for Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People, which lays bare what Moore finds to be deceptions and manipulations that got the United States into the war in Iraq. Numerous other writers addressed themselves to this theme at the time, but, as Maria D. Jones noted in a review for Curled Up with a Good Book, “what makes this book stand out from many other Bush-bashings is the focus on the military men and women in Iraq and the suffering they endure because of the ideologies of a small group of neoconservative men who have never seen battle themselves.” Teaming up again with Slater, Moore further explored the mind and life of Rove in the 2006 title The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, “an indictment of the man himself as a cynical and manipulative hypocrite who will do anything to win,” according to Confessore. Moore and Slater attempt to document what they see as the lies and deceptions employed by Rove to cement absolute Republican hegemony despite a very slim majority in the polls. For Confessore, this book is a “blistering sequel” yet one which “rapidly descends into self-parody.” Confessore believed that the authors gave Rove too much credit as the architect of all Republican machinations. Pointing to the use of such divisive wedge issues as gay marriage and tort reform, Moore and Slater credit Rove with designing a divide-and-conquer plan for the Republicans to hold power for a generation or more. Writing in Library Journal, Jill Ortner called The Architect“well-documented.” Further praise came from a Publishers Weekly reviewer who found the work “a compulsive page-turner,” and from Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush, who termed it “riveting investigative journalism.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July 1, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, p. 5.

Campaigns & Elections, June, 2003, review of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, p. 14.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2006, review of The Architect, p. 667.

Library Journal, August 1, 2006, Jill Ortner, review of The Architect, p. 107.

New Statesman, May 12, 2003, Mick Hume, review of Bush’s Brain, p. 52.

New York Times Book Review, October 15, 2006, Nicholas Confessore, “Strategist in Chief,” review of The Architect.

Publishers Weekly, July 24, 2006, review of The Architect, p. 52.

Reason, October, 2003, John F. Pitney, Jr., “Accidental Genius,” review of Bush’s Brain, p. 58.

Spectator, May 24, 2003, George Osborne, review of Bush’s Brain, p. 39.

Variety, March 29, 2004, Joe Leydon, review of Bush’s Brain (film), p. 85.

Video Business, August 30, 2004, Ed Hulse, review of Bush’s Brain (film), p. 18.

USA Today Magazine, July, 2003, Gerald F. Kreyche, review of Bush’s Brain, p. 81.

ONLINE

BuzzFlash.com, http://www.buzzflash.com/ (June 2, 2003), “Who Is Bush’s Brain?”

Curled Up with a Good Book, http://www.curledup.com/ (January 27, 2007), Marie D. Jones, review of Bush’s War for Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People.

KarlRove.com, http://www.karlrove.com (January 27, 2007).*