Farewell, Turd Blossom

I can't let Karl Rove's departure from the Bush Administration slip by without comment. I've never understood why a person whose sole job is to ensure the dominance of one political party over the other should draw a salary from the American people. Seriously. Democrat or Republican or Whig or Snake Handler, I don't care -- once you've done your job of getting your guy (or gal) elected, move along to another candidate for another office. Because when you let political concerns drive your policy agenda, you're clearly only serving one half (or slightly more or less) of the citizens of this great country.

Sure, I'm being incredibly naive, I know that. This is how the machine churns. And both major parties are guilty of it (though I'd argue that Bush has allowed Rove to push the practice beyond any previous extremes of arrogance, viciousness, and general sweaty, frog-lipped creepiness). But I'd like to think the American people are better than that, and deserve better than that. Or maybe not the American people per se -- since they've done nothing to stop this practice and even have gone so far as to reward it in 2004 -- but America itself, the grand experiment in democracy deserves better.

In light of Rove's exodus from the Oval Office, I wanted to include a couple of links from people who have examined this development in terms far more detailed, pithy and entertaining than I. First of all, from the Daily Kos, the political blog that's the bane of the Bill O'Reilly crowd, we have this post from a writer named Hunter. If you don't have time for the whole post, here's the money shot:

Rove's oft-touted "genius" is nothing more than single-minded amorality. In campaigns and in the administration, he was and is unapologetically amoral in service to his own cause or that of his client: his "genius" is that he has consistently been willing to go farther, be meaner, and invent more astonishing lies than would be done by anyone in politics with a thin remaining threads (sic) of a conscience. From smearing John McCain's children with race-baiting taunts to attacking the careers and wives of critics to helping corrupt the most basic and foundational premises of the the United States Department of Justice, nothing has ever been considered "out of bounds". If a malevolent action is not taken -- such as ratcheting up the already venomous Republican rhetoric against immigrants -- it is done only in service to calculated poll numbers, never as a nod to basic morality or patriotism or human decency.

"Amoral" is the best way to describe the way the Republican campaign machine has run the country the last seven years. It's often been said that Republicans sure know how to win elections -- but governing? That's a whole other bag of babies. Rove is the walking, talking, smirking, slithering personification of that adage.

And on a lighter note, if that's possible in these dark times, here's a fantastic column by Mark Morford of SFGate.com, the web site of the San Francisco Chronicle. Thank God you are not Karl Rove, indeed.