Walter Shapiro: "Maybe someday Karl Rove will write a thoughtful and candid account of how he helped guide George W. Bush downward from the national-unity president of the months after 9/11 to the derided figure who left office with a 34 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, on par with the exiting Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman. Rove, who had once dreamed of launching a new conservative era much as his hero William McKinley did in 1896, certainly has the intellect and the appreciation of history to write such an anatomy of a political disaster. Unfortunately, Courage and Consequence is not that memoir."