In early 2005, freshman senator Barack Obama arrived early for a White House meeting. Rove ran into him on a West Wing stairway and confronted him about a sentence in Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope,” that irked Rove: “For a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power, for Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, the fiery rhetoric was more than a matter of campaign strategy. They were true believers who mean what they said, whether it was ‘No new taxes’ or ‘We are a Christian nation.’” In Rove’s book, he writes:
“I certainly don’t believe and have never said, ‘We are a Christian nation.’ … [Obama] began insisting he rally wasn’t saying what he had quoted me as saying … [H]e was unwilling to acknowledge the mistake or apologize. … Obama remembered the moment. On April 26, 2008, I attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as a guest of Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. At the dinner, Jon sat between me and Valerie Jarrett … During the dinner, Jarrett e-mailed Obama on her BlackBerry to let him know she was breaking bread with Satan himself. He e-mailed her back and Jarrett made the mistake of showing Jon and me his reply, which was ‘Rove hates me.’ I knew Senator Obama was alluding to our run-in over the passage in his book. I asked Jarrett to tell him I wasn’t in the habit of hating people.” (pp. 514-15)
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