Rove’s Legacy is Bush’s Legacy

Soon the Boy Genius will be gone. And the big question is: What will be Karl Rove’s legacy? We don’t have to wait for historians to answer that question. We already know.

Yes, part of Karl Rove’s legacy will be two election victories in Texas for George W. Bush, and two nationwide. Any political consultant could be proud of that.

But, alongside Rove’s winning record, you must add:

One, the people he’s destroyed: Ann Richards, accused of being a lesbian; John McCain, accused of having fathered a black love-child; John Kerry, accused of being a coward under fire; and Valerie Plame, outed as an undercover CIA agent.

Rove was a political assassin. In the spirit of his political mentor Lee Atwater, for Rove it was not enough to defeat his political opponents; he had to destroy them personally, practicing the “politics of personal destruction.”

Two, you must consider the policies he’s promoted: an illegal, immoral war in Iraq; branding anyone who disagrees with George Bush as un-American; no expansion of healthcare for America’s children; no stem cell research to save millions of lives; tax breaks for only the wealthiest of Americans; and exporting millions of American jobs.

By that scale, Karl Rove is a political and policy disaster. And so is the president he created and worked for.