[citation needed] During the 2004 presidential election, Dowd was chief strategist for George W. Bush's re-election campaign.

[7] Dowd admitted in 2024 that the allegations made by Swift Vets and POWs for Truth during the election were disproven and "nearly all lies.

As reported in The New York Times on April 1, 2007, Dowd had come to feel a deep frustration with and great disappointment in George W. Bush, whom he criticized for failing to call the nation together in a time of war, for ignoring the will of the American public with regard to the Iraq War, for his re-nomination of former UN ambassador John Bolton after his rejected confirmation and for failing to hold Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accountable for the Abu Ghraib scandal.

[9] According to Democracy Now!, Dowd claims to have undergone a change of heart regarding the Iraq War, and adopted a position advocating a withdrawal from that country, after contemplating the likelihood of his own son's deployment to the country, as well as after seeing Bush refuse to meet with anti-war-mother Cindy Sheehan in summer 2005, while he was entertaining Lance Armstrong at his ranch in Crawford, Texas; President Bush had previously met with Sheehan in June 2004.

[11][12] Upon leaving the Bush administration, Dowd has not been on speaking terms with former White House political adviser Karl Rove.

On December 2, 2010, Dowd penned an opinion piece in the National Journal defending WikiLeaks, writing that, "Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on a few things: That the government, in the name of fighting terrorism, has the right to listen in on all of our phone conversations and read our e-mails, even if it has no compelling reason for doing so.

[1] He is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community.

[17] Dowd came under widespread criticism when, during the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, he tweeted about a congresswoman, "Elise Stefanik is a perfect example of why just electing someone because they are a woman or a millennial doesn’t necessarily get you the leaders we need."

[5] His eldest son, Daniel, is an Army veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and was deployed to Baghdad from 2007 to 2009 as a signals intelligence specialist.