Karl Rove's Next Job-Can He Spin Bush's Legacy?

http://www.slate.com/id/2172154/pagenum/all/#page_start

Spinner Emeritus
Karl Rove's next job.
By John Dickerson


Karl Rove has always loved his role as White House historian. Almost as soon as he moved into his West Wing office, he was giving friends late-night tours of the building, offering tidbits about the paintings, rooms, and furniture. His office walls are clotted with yellowed documents and pictures related to Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. More than once, he has challenged academic historians who wrote unfavorably about the Bush presidency. Now that Rove is leaving the White House, shaping the judgment of history will no doubt become his full-time job.

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Though Rove has not spent much time on television spinning for the administration, he is good at offering live audiences seemingly plausible explanations for the administration's, er, temporary troubles. At a recent Aspen Institute forum, he had a largely liberal audience applauding after he charmed the crowd with a series of self-deprecating jokes. Standing in line to get coffee, on his way to the venue in the heart of liberal territory, he said he heard the owner tell a patron that Karl Rove was there. "I'd like to slug that son of a bitch," said the patron. "Well he's right behind you," said the owner. To the audience laughter Rove responded: "I knew I was getting close to Aspen." At the same venue, Rove quietly began the task of rewriting the story of his involvement in the Valerie Plame outing by editing the nature of his conversation with my former colleague Matt Cooper.

Even as he departed, Rove was predicting Democratic disaster around the corner.

In his Wall Street Journal interview, he promises that the debate over the FISA court will split the party and damage it with the American people. (He said that very same issue would help Republicans keep the majority in Congress in the 2006 elections.) But despite his overreaching miscalculations, conservatives still crave tactical instruction from a man who shares their core beliefs, their thirst for confrontation, and whom they still consider a genius.

Rove can be expected to paint a heroic self-portrait in the memoir he is now said to be writing. It seems unlikely he'll fare as well in the accounts of his colleagues. Though Rove sometimes drew up reading lists for lower-level staffers or gave them advice on places to go on vacation in Texas, he will be better remembered for intermittently exploding into purple-faced rages. To talk off-the-record to senior White House aides over the years about their constant, relentless battles with Rove was like listening in on marriage counseling. Many people inside and outside the White House feared Rove, a number of them truly admired him (professionally and personally), but of very few can it be said that they ever trusted him.

In retirement, Rove will have a willing audience among his party's faithful. Though the president has lost his shine among some die-hard conservatives, Rove largely hasn't—despite being the architect of the push for comprehensive immigration reform. Even after the 2006 losses, conservatives were saying it wasn't Rove's fault, but the fault of a corrupt, confused GOP congressional leadership. Conservatives also need Rove to survive as a guru. While Republicans are momentarily depressed, it doesn't come from a fundamental conundrum about their party's core beliefs. Many just think that circumstances, a poorly managed war, and a distracted president harmed the execution of GOP policy.

And I mean it, damn it.

Was there ever a larger Turd than G. W. Bush's presidency - indeed, the man himself???? Usually, from turds emerge maggots. that seems more appropriate to me.

SATAN !!!