Rove's Retirement

It is a telling commentary, though, on the state of the Bush administration that even the ultimate insider is writing its history a good year and a half before it is over...as if the coronor has been called in long before the patient has expired.

Though the New York Times recognizes that Rove leaves a sinking ship, as does Michael Tomasky in the Guardian, we should acknowledge his genius--aided in no small part by a complicit media establishment--was to rally working people around an "ordinary" even folksy man--GWB--while have people ignore the fact that he is child of the establishment. He did this not once, but many times over.

It is often observed that Democrats try to pretend that they are smarter than they are, while Republicans try to pretend that they are dumber than they are... Granted, in Bush's case, less effort is required. But the Republican's faux and paternalistic populism is however grounded in a deeper, underlying class divide in American society that Republicans understand and that Democrats either ignore or cannot understand.