Bush, Brainless

Back when I was at FishbowlNY and during the height of Plamegate, I wrote a post called "Rove dances the dance of a thousand hippos, or something" to describe the nimble two-stepping the White House was doing around the revelation that Karl Rove had been Matt Cooper's double-super-secret source. It was a post largely about what wasn't happening, but for some reason that I could never figure out, this post became — and stayed, at least during my tenure — one of Fishbowl's inexplicably most popular links. There was no good reason for it, and I could never find the source of its unremitting and apparently irresistible clickabiilty — all I could do was conclude that there were larger, unseen forces moving behind the curtain in machinations I could scarcely begin to appreciate. Which, considering we're talking about Karl Rove, was pretty appropriate.

Cut to this morning, and not even buried on a Friday at 6 pm (no, that's for Iraq war losses): Rove is resigning, parting ways with George Bush after masterminding his rise to — and consolidation of — power, his and the rest of the GOP's (or whomever in the GOP did not stand in the way of victory, cough John McCain in 2000 cough). It was Rove's non-reality-based community — so it is fitting that he chose to give the scoop to Wall Street Journal editorial page editor and total Republican whackjob noted conservative Paul Gigot, which published the bombshell in the wee hours of the morning, causing the media to jump into overdrive in order to play catch up ("confirming" the story is not quite the same as breaking it — which is why "Rove to Quit White House, He Tells Wall Street Journal" is probably not the NYT's favorite headline ever).

So, what does this mean, other than the media are now free to rap with him at anytime? Is it a vote of no-confidence in Bush and the GOP, a throwing up of the hands in the face of Iraq and sundry, just in time to narrowly miss all the feel-good nostalgia of the upcoming Katrina anniversary? Or is it Bush who's finally Rumsfelded him out of the picture, now that the fruits of the Rove-orchestrated GOP have started to go rotten? Feh, that's digging for the rest of the media to do; Gigot troubled himself not with such pressing questions, happy enough to transcribe reality-based proclamations like "[Bush] will move back up in the polls," "Iraq will be in a better place" and there will be "a fissure in the Democratic Party." In the meantime, whatever dances have been two-stepping behind the scenes will play out as they always do (i.e. probably with an angsted-about NYT cover story a year later that the WSJ's Gigot will then decry) — and sometime in September, his hand will be detected behind the meteoric rise of some lucky GOP candidate, while some unlucky other one suddenly discovers via whisper campaign that he had a black child out of wedlock somewhere, probably with a lesbian. Karl Rove, ladies and gentlemen!

p.s. Yeah, I know I didn't follow up on my headline. Didn't think I needed to.

The Mark of Rove [WSJ]

Related, but second:
Rove to Quit White House, He Tells Wall Street Journal [NYT]
Rove says he was not forced to quit [CNN]
Rove bows out, despised and deified [Politico]
The departure of Karl Rove [Guardian UK]

Related, and damned prescient:
The Rove Presidency [Atlantic Monthly] (subscription)

Related, and prescient in its own way:
Rove dances the dance of a thousand hippos, or something [FishbowlNY]