Rove is already half forgotten

It is not an event," said Talleyrand, Napoleon's former foreign minister, correcting an excited reaction to the Emperor's death. "It is merely news."

Karl Rove's departure from the White House on August 31 is having a similarly muted impact. It is not an event, merely an item in the 24-hour news cycle, to be followed by speculation from two partisan analysts, a brief review of Rove's greatest hits, a discussion on the nightly news hour - and the rest is silence.

Well, not silence exactly, but a hurried burial, a quick prayer and a new search for the quiet Machiavelli behind the next president.

Though Rove has not gone, he is already half-forgotten. With President George W. Bush struggling to rise above approval ratings in the low 30s, no GOP presidential hopeful wants to be too closely associated with his team. Doubtless Rove will be occasionally asked for advice by Republicans behind the scenes. Otherwise, leave him to C-Span, business consulting, a lucrative book contract, and - what he really enjoys - teaching.

Democrats will miss him more. The "netroots" of the internet Left had been hoping to see Rove carted off in chains. They could never describe exactly what crime he had committed - but, hey, that's what special prosecutors are for. Rove was their own Emmanuel Goldstein, good for a 20-minute Hate Session whenever things got slack.

The Democrat party professionals were more balanced (i.e., cynical.)

Since they prefer negative campaigning to positive campaigning -it's more honest - they saw Rove's horror-comic image as a strong organising principle. But their regret will be balanced by some relief at the departure of a competent opponent.

If anything, they and the media are both likely to exaggerate Rove's abilities and triumphs.

What is often passed over in the awe-struck tributes to "Bush's Brain" is that Rove fell on his face in the 2000 election. Not only did Bush lose the popular vote to Al Gore; not only did the combined Gore-Ralph Nader vote defeat the combined Bush-Pat Buchanan vote by three percentage points; but these reverses were due to Rove over-spending in California and taking Florida and other Bush-leaning states for granted. Between them the US Constitution and the Electoral College bailed Rove out in 2000, but a handful of votes the other way could have made him a symbol of over-confident folly in the history books.

No contest

The next contest was no contest. Rove was handed the 2002 mid-term elections on a platter by September 11. But Rove deserves full credit for the less inevitable 2004 Bush victory when, in a tightly contested race and with the Iraq war becoming more unpopular, his organisation ensured that every Republican voter turned out on the day. Bush's narrow victory over Kerry was a true achievement by his "brain."

Rove's last great test was comprehensive immigration reform. He put together a strong bi-partisan coalition behind a very liberal measure (identified, not incorrectly, as an amnesty), and saw it defeated twice by strong grass-roots opposition that once he would have organised. The first defeat contributed mightily to the Democrats' sweeping victory in last November's mid-term elections. It divided the GOP and deprived it of a strong populist issue.

The second and worse (because more predictable) defeat left the Bush administration reeling and legacy-less in its last 18 months. Rove must bear some responsibility for this. He made it clear that he fully shared the president's commitment to immigration policy as both public policy and political strategy.

Rove must sometimes have had private doubts about the political wisdom of Bush policies. Social security reform, for instance, was plainly a high-risk venture. In the event the Democrats used it to batter the administration into unpopularity only months into its second term. But Rove never allowed daylight to appear between himself and Bush. He saw his job as to provide the political strategy to get Bush's agenda implemented.

If loyalty can be overdone, it is usually a virtue - especially to its recipient. The departure of a loyal strategist would usually be a setback for a president. So the quiet reaction to Rove's farewell confirms the impression of a becalmed administration with an agenda limited to halting a US withdrawal from Iraq and blocking Democrat spending measures.

If the ship isn't heading anywhere, why worry about dropping the pilot?

John O'Sullivan, former advisor to Prime Minister Lady Thatcher, is the author of "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister", Regnery 2007, and a member of Benador Associates.