Rove Gone, Who’s Responsible?

Karl Rove is brilliant, and his time at the top is over. Bush rightly called him “the architect.” Rove, more than anyone, was responsible for 1) pulling Bush through in 2000 when the country was peaceful and prosperous under Clinton-Gore and could have expected the White House to remain in Democrats’ hands; 2) nationalizing the 2002 mid-term election, thereby growing Republican numbers that year, and; 3) out ground-gaming the Democrats in 2004.

Byron York argues, persuasively to me, that Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of Rove in the Plame affair brought Rove down. York credits Democrats for mounting the drum beat that kept Fitzgerald going, but to me it’s obvious the Plame business owed its punch to an obsessed media, not Democrats. Whoever, whatever, Fitzgerald’s 2003-06 investigation knocked Rove off his game, and helped Democrats defeat Republicans in 2006 (Rove of course attributed the GOP’s defeat that year to factors beyond White House control). Fitzgerald’s dogged pursuit of Rove seemed unfair to me; Rove didn’t initiate the Plame leak, and remained unindicted because unlike Libby, he hadn’t committed perjury. But harassing Rove in 2005-06 certainly worked to Democrats’ advantage.

And now Rove returns to Texas. His triumphs are so closely associated with the personal relationship built with Bush in Texas in the 1990’s that they can’t be repeated.

Rove is avuncular. I think he’ll end up a political commentator instead of working for a GOP that badly needs him.