Former George W. Bush presidential adviser Karl Rove says he found Barack Obama so arrogant that he doesn’t consider himself a “mere mortal.”
In an exclusive interview Rove was asked if he has heard reports that Obama is a “loner.”
“I not only heard it, I had to deal with it,” he responds.
“During my time in the White House my job was to try to develop an informal relationship with him when he came to the Senate in 2005, and I saw him up close for almost three years.
“My view of him is that he’s incredibly smart. He can, if he wants to, be enormously charming. But he’s also the most self-aware person I’ve ever met in politics, which makes for a deadly combination. He is arrogant and aloof and diffident and doesn’t believe he needs to get his hands dirty with the normal work of mortals. He’s not a mere mortal in his mind.
“He’s developed no long-term and deep connection with the [Democratic] leadership. They like him, they respect him for having returned the White House to Democratic hands. But there’s none of the close friendship and close working relationship that you’d expect the president to develop with individual members of Congress.”