Matt Dowd is widely credited as being one of the masterminds behind the election and re-election of President Bush. So when he started publicly expressing his displeasure at some of the key actions taken by the Bush White House, say the Iraq War or pushing for the hate amendment it was a big deal. I was actually there in the room when he first spoke. Here is how the LAT recalls that incident in today’s profile of Dowd.

His disenchantment with the president built over several years. Dowd went public at a Berkeley seminar on the 2006 California governor’s race; Dowd was both a senior advisor to the Republican National Committee, where he landed after Bush took office, and a top strategist for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reelection effort. It was a question about the president that set Dowd off and, looking back, liberated him.

“Do you lose sleep at night knowing that you gave this country probably the worst administration we’ve ever had?” asked a young man. “I mean, have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?”

Dowd tensed and leaned forward. Rather than defend Bush, he spoke of the oldest of his three sons, an Army language specialist then facing deployment to Iraq. “Now, am I a person who stays up at night thinking about that? Yeah. . . . Do we have hopes and dreams and disappointments? . . . Yes,” Dowd said.

But when things don’t turn out as hoped “it does not mean that you somehow have to walk down the street in a hair shirt with a sign that says, ‘Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,’ ” he said. “We move on.”

Dowd now sees the confrontation as “a gift [that] gave me the opportunity to start expressing things more and more publicly.”

Here is what is missing. His fellow panel members, all political hacks and many members of the audience tried to shut the questioner down. The did not want Dowd to have to answer such an aggressive question, particularly one that was not on the subject of the conference. But he overrode their objections and gave an emotional response. It was quite a moment really.

The point is that the hacks were covering for the hacks. They are usually quite good at reflecting questions, but they were rather stirred up at this pretty quintessential Berkeley moment. Dowd broke through that and addressed the question. It seems to have quite acutely effected his life over the past 10 months. Very interesting.

I am for one glad to see him speaking out. We need more voices like his. It is just a shame it took him this long.