News is out that Karl Rove is resigning at the end of this month.
The stated reason from Karl Rove is:
He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president’s term in January 2009.
“I just think it’s time,” Mr. Rove said in the interview. “There’s always something that can keep you here, and as much as I’d like to be here, I’ve got to do this for the sake of my family.” Mr. Rove and his wife have a home in Ingram, Texas, and a son who attends college in nearby San Antonio.
There will be much spinning and cheering about this news — spinning from the left and right, the cheering of this man who devoted so much of his time to serving the public will be the loudest from the left.
Me? I find the news to be mostly of the “”so what” variety. Personally, I think it’s exactly as it seems — Karl Rove has done a great job serving this country, his work is done, he’s tired, and he wants to go spend time with his family.
I wish Mr. Rove and his family the very best, and if I ever run into him now that’ll be here in Texas a bit more, I’ll be sure to shake his hand and thank him.
I think it’s a misrepresentation of Rove’s career to say he spent it ’serving the public’. In fact, he spent it getting Republicans elected. To be more specific he spent it dividing the electorate in half (plus one) for the purpose of electing Republicans.
It wasn’t until the last two years that you can that he has ’served the public’ and the results of that service have been a spectacular failure for both the President and the country. It was Rove that convinced Bush to stay away from New Orleans after Katrina. Rove that pushed Bush to focus on the incredibly unpopular Social Security privatization scheme- because he thought that he could undermine Democratic support in their role as the protector of this program.
I don’t cheer his departure- in the end- each of the bad decisions were the President’s.