Rove's politics rooted in Utah experiences

Rove said he later worked with Bush to make Republican messages more palatable to Democrats. Bush "put it in terms that people could understand and spoke with a new vocabulary for a Republican," Rove said in 2002.

That included Bush describing himself as a "compassionate conservative," a phrase that many political observers credited Rove with coining, although he refused in an interview to take credit. "A lot of people do give me undue credit. It's part of the way that he (Bush) gets underestimated," he said.

Rove said friends from the 1968 Bennett campaign helped him land a job on a Senate campaign in Illinois. That led to a job as executive director of the national College Republicans.

He then met George Herbert Walker Bush, when he was national GOP chairman. The senior Bush hired Rove as an aide. That led Rove to meet the younger Bush and so began their years of work together.

In the 2002 Deseret Morning News interview, Rove also defined his sense of what it is to work in the White House.

"It's important to remember that when you are here, you are not 'it,'" he said. "There are people who came before you and people who will come after you, and this place is best approached with a sense of service. It's also a sense of responsibility. You serve the country, and you serve the president."

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com