Karl Rove - direct link from Watergate to Shrub.

More about Karl Rove. Rick Perlstein describes Rove's early political history during the Nixon administration. He also relays rumors that Rove may be slated to become Fred Thompson's campaign manager in Thompson's Presidential run. Go read it. It's short.

Then consider this story from Kevin Drum.

Josh Green's fortuitously timed Karl Rove profile in this month's Atlantic contains this mysterious anecdote:

Hurricane Katrina clearly changed the public perception of Bush's presidency. Less examined is the role Rove played in the defining moment of the administration's response: when Air Force One flew over Louisiana and Bush gazed down from on high at the wreckage without ordering his plane down. Bush advisers Matthew Dowd and Dan Bartlett wanted the president on the ground immediately, one Bush official told me, but were overruled by Rove for reasons that are still unclear: "Karl did not want the plane to land in Louisiana." Rove's political acumen seemed to be deserting him altogether.

I suspect the answer here is that Rove never truly had a lot of political acumen. He had campaign acumen. He was good at winning elections, but not at much else.
[Emphasis mine - Editor WTF-o]

I'd really agree with that last line. "...good at winning elections, but not at much else." Someone in the Republican Party needs that kind of expertise right now, and rattlesnakes don't retire. They just move from one hole to another looking for more comfort and better prey. Rove is leaving one hole, and he will be searching for another.

Rove working for a Republican candidate for President would certainly explain the timing of his departure from the White House. Besides the fact that it is clearly on his own terms (his ego demands that) it would be difficult for him to work on Thompson's campaign from the White House, and Fred needs him now. Fred has already gone through one campaign manager and the replacements are described as "temporary." The Republican caucuses and primaries start in January 2008, so Fred has only about four months to announce and become a serious candidate.

Considering the lackluster performance of all of the currently announced candidates ("None of the Above" is still leading) Thompson has an excellent opportunity to win the nomination if he gets a well-managed campaign.

Rove could not run such a campaign from the White House, and time is short. So Rove needs to act soon if he is going to. Nixon is known to have said that Thompson is "Not very smart, but friendly." That makes him Rove's type of candidate.

Since Thompson is scheduled to announce his candidacy in September, we should know soon.

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For an interesting set of views go see Digby. She has assembled some of the less hagiographic and more accurate reports on Republican saint Rove that have been recently published. Andrew Sullivan is particularly scathing.

SMU to become a Texas Disneyland

It looks like Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas is in line to land the George W. Bush Presidential Library. For background see:

• The Dallas Morning News,
• The bush Library blog
  and
• The Economist.

Of course, The Bush Library will only be co located with the University. It will be run independently, with no control by the University. Quite a few of the SMU faculty have been extremely unhappy about the set of arrangements. They appear to be designed to adopt the academic reputation of SMU, yet be under the control of Bush apologists rather than responsible academics. The purpose of the Bush library will be to get out "The Bush Message" rather than being a source of good historical research. In the latter function it will be much like the approach the Nixon Library has taken to presenting the Watergate Scandal which knowledgeable historians consider to be a joke. Which brings up the LA Times article from July 8, 2007.

The LA Times offers a description of the sad Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda. California.

The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda has long been the most kicked-around of presidential libraries, and nothing invited more ridicule than the dim, narrow room purporting to describe the scandal that drove its namesake from office.

Venturing into that room, visitors learned that Watergate, which provoked a constitutional crisis and became an enduring byword for abuses of executive power, was really a "coup" engineered by Nixon enemies. The exhibit accused Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — without evidence — of "offering bribes" to further their famous coverage.

Most conspicuous was a heavily edited, innocent-seeming version of the "smoking gun" tape of June 23, 1972, the resignation-clinching piece of evidence in which Nixon and his top aide are heard conspiring to thwart the FBI probe of Watergate.

This was history as Nixon wanted it remembered, a monument to his decades-long campaign to refurbish his name. Nixon himself approved the exhibit before the library's 1990 opening.

"Everybody who visited it, who knew the first thing about history, thought it was a joke," one Nixon scholar, David Greenberg, said of the Watergate gallery. "You didn't know whether to laugh or cry."

Then the article goes on to describe the takeover of the previously privately owned and operated Nixon Library by the presidential library system of the National Archives, so there may be some hope for the Nixon Library in the future. The Bush apologists can be expected to fight any such intrusion by professional historians.

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Comments on this LA Times article can be found at:

• The Left Coaster
  and at
• Digby

Nixon's opinion of Fred Thompson

Nixon had a rather low opinion of Fred Thompson. Here is Noxon discussing Thompson with Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt:

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not "very smart."

"Not extremely so," Buzhardt agreed.

"But he's friendly," Nixon said.

"But he's friendly," Buzhardt agreed. "We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination."

Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the Dean cross-examination.

"I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day," Buzhardt said. "Uh, perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination."

Later in the same conversation, Buzhardt said Thompson was "willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have be as a Republican increasingly."

I knew that he was lazy and had a reputation for not doing much as a Senator, but while I never liked Nixon, I certainly wouldn't question his judgment on someone's Intelligence.

So let's see. The Republican field for the nomination for President at the monent consists of the dumb crook, Giuliani who will sooner or later self-destruct because he can't control his own statements; Romney, the good-looking wealthy guy who will take any opinion he thinks enough voters will buy to vote for him; the over-the-hill McCain who has the most sense of the bunch and no real chance of winning (probably because he DOES make so much good sense), and the lazy dumb actor who is offering himself as Reagan-lite.

My money is on Fred. He wants to replace a lazy dumb oilman and son of a President. I wonder who he will choose as his own Cheney?