The incredibly credible...Karl Rove. Sunday morning talker extraordinaire.

Last month Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy subpoenaed Rove to testify about his role in the politicization of the Justice Department and the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. So far Rove has ignored the subpoena and has refused to testify, citing executive privilege. In addition, two weeks ago Rove skipped a Congressional hearing on the allegedly improper use by White House aides of Republican National Committee email accounts. Leahy has vowed to continue the investigation. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Rove said "I'm Moby Dick and they're after me."

"Next week, I'm informed via troubled White House sources, will see the full unveiling of Karl Rove's fall election strategy. He's intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies."

Earlier this year, for instance, Paul O'Neill, Bush's former treasury secretary, gave an account of a pivotal cabinet meeting in late 2002 to discuss a second round of deep tax cuts, at which the president apparently had second thoughts about focusing so much of the benefits on the wealthy. "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" Bush asks, according to O'Neill's account. Rove brings the president back in line, urging him to "stick to principle". Rove won the day, and O'Neill was forced out of the cabinet.

Who is Karl Rove

The incident marked the genesis of the Rove-Bush axis and it was in Washington that Rove met the younger Bush. He fell, politically speaking, in love. "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma - you know, wow," Rove recalled years later. In 1977, Rove was sent to Texas, in theory to run a political action committee, but according to one Texan political consultant who knew him at the time, "It was really to baby-sit Bush back when Bush was drinking".

As the subject of a contempt resolution for hiding documents, Rove is hardly one to talk. Just last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-7 to approve a contempt citation against Rove for withholding information relating to the firing of U.S. attorneys:

The committee subpoenaed Rove and Bolten over the summer as part of its probe into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year. Bush, citing executive privilege, refused to allow Rove and Bolten to testify or turn over documents to the panel. Bolten was subpoenaed in his role as custodian of White House records, while Rove called to testify over his knowledge on the role politics played in the firings.

The Senate Judiciary Committee requested Rove’s public testimony on the firings of the prosecutors and issued subpoenas for internal White House e-mails, memos, and other related documents. White House counsel Fred Fielding said Rove “had been directed” by President Bush “not to produce any documents or to produce any testimony.”

Moreover, last April, an RNC lawyer revealed that at least four years’ worth of Rove e-mails are “missing.” Congress has sought — unsuccessfully — to recover the “lost” emails from Rove.

Think Progress

The most prominent among these investigations are those being undertaken by the chairmen of the House and Senate's Judiciary committees, Representative John Conyers (D. MI) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D.VT), who are investigating the politicization of the Department of Justice, particularly in the hiring and firing of United States Attorneys. But an even broader inquiry is underway, initiated by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, under the direction of Chairman Henry Waxman (D. CA), and that inquiry has uncovered the extensive use of federal resources by the Bush Administration to assist its political friends and punish its political enemies.

..."So far, the Bush White House has successfully stonewalled all these inquiries by invoking executive privilege, which it construes in a manner so extreme as to lead it to instruct White House witnesses under subpoena to not even show up at the hearings at which they are scheduled to testify. Among those now so defying the Congress is Karl Rove, the Bush White House player many believe to be at the center of virtually all of the Bush Administration's politicalization efforts.

Rove, of course, has announced his departure from the White House. While I do not much like speculation, a secretive presidency like Bush's invites it. This fact calms any qualms I might have about exploring possibilities as why Rove is leaving now, in particular.

...."Another attorney suggested that since Rove is facing potential contempt proceedings by the House, and the Senate, or both, for his refusal to appear and testify, he has become a lightning rod for the president and the White House. Several Washington insiders viewed Rove's conspicuous "last hurrah" exit - visiting all the Sunday talk shows and giving farewell interviews to select members of the Washington press corps - as designed to help make the point to the public that he is now disassociated from the Bush White House. (Of course, this is not true, but public perception may now see him as an outsider.)