Rove says Sept. 11 hasn't changed Bush

Karl Rove rejected a growing consensus that responding to the terrorist attacks of that day transformed Bush and his approach to the duties of his office.

Rove told a think tank forum that the confident, in-control Bush out there now was beneath the surface all along.

"I, for one, do not buy this notion that September 11th changed George W. Bush," Rove said.

"Great events do not transform presidents. They bring out who they are. ... All this about he's changed, he's transformed, no. He is who he is, required to do more in a great crisis."

Rove noted that many great presidents were not considered great in their day.

"The times didn't demand more of them," he said. Only the lens of history changed that, Rove said, and those presidents who rose to the challenges of their time were able to achieve a lasting legacy.

He described a very controlled Bush directing his staff at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, on Sept. 11, only minutes after the first hijacked jet hit the World Trade Center.

"The president came walking into the room, took one look at the television set and he told us, he said, 'We're at war. Get me the vice president. Get me the director of the FBI,"' Rove said.

"You're either inspired by the moment or you're not. You're either capable of rising to it or you're not," Rove said. Bush, he added, "understands that as we are successful in the prosecution of war, that will create political capital that can be used to expand on other things" he wants to accomplish.

Rove appeared before an American Enterprise Institute forum analyzing the Bush presidency before and after Sept. 11. From his campaign up until that day, Rove said, Bush was a big-picture guy with two issues, education and tax cuts, at the top of his agenda.

After Sept. 11, Bush's main priorities became "extinguish al Qaida and terrorism, and safeguard the homeland," Rove said.