In light of the big retirement announcement, the media has spent the day gushing over Karl Rove. But it's worth asking some tough questions. Besides the fact that he got an intellectual lightweight with no particular qualifications for the office elected to the presidency, what has Karl Rove done? That is, what will he be remembered for post-2000? Andrew Sullivan takes a crack:

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa.

Too much blame? One could argue that Rove always got too much credit, and this is simply the flip side of the coin. Regardless, there's no way to spin this man's legacy as a success. Sullivan's not done. "Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times," he writes. "He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war — and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency." Conservatism is not entrenched in the American identity, as Rove had intended. It is a dying breed in many parts of the country, and increasingly unpopular even in its former strongholds.

Dan Froomkin of the Post agrees, writing that Rove "leaves his party in worse shape than he found it, with his boss profoundly discredited in the eyes of the American people." Froomkin also writes that part of the blame for this failed administration will "accrue to Rove for choosing to use national security as a wedge issue."

And that's the key point. Rove, a campaigner, was handed the keys to the White House car in every instance. Remember when faith-based initiatives czar John DiIulio resigned in disgust and said, "What you've got is everything and I mean everything being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis"? When you actually govern with the exclusive aim of building partisan advantage, you are inevitably headed for disaster. The United States of America's priorities are not the same as the GOP's priorities, and while the goal of the presidency is to further the former, this administration was always interested in the latter. Throw in hubris, incompetency, and an obstinate unwillingness to hear outside views, and you've got one of the worst presidencies in the history of the Republic. Quite a genius, that Karl.

Photo courtesy of Time, where they've captured Rove through the ages.

Late update: Not surprisingly, Harold Meyerson agrees with me.

[Rove] and Bush overlooked the epochal growth of economic insecurity in America. They refused to see that the very economic changes they celebrated had made Americans understandably nervous and pessimistic to an unprecedented extent about the nation's long-term economic prospects. And so, as employers were abandoning their provision of retirement benefits to employees, Bush and Rove called for abandoning the government's commitment as well. At a time when ordinary Americans' incomes were stagnating, and when growing numbers of Americans understood that they were in some nebulous competition with millions of lower-paid workers in other lands that the government seemed powerless to mitigate, Bush and Rove proposed legalizing the undocumented immigrants who had flowed across the border.

Could there have been a more profound misreading of the American temper?

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We are a shining city on a hill.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail...

Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries.

When the brutal dictator of a failed state cites you as inspiration, you've really lived up to your ideals, wouldn't you say?

(H/T Think Progress)

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It shouldn't come as any great surprise that Karl Rove is leaving the administration. His job is all about winning, and with Bush, there's nothing left to be won. (Though even on his way out the door, Rove can't keep himself from spinning, predicting that we'll turn a corner in Iraq and Bush's poll numbers will rise. But that's a sucker's game, and Rove himself wants no part of it.)

Rove has said he's going back to Texas to spend more time with his family. Awww, that's nice. But then what? I wouldn't expect him to stay out of politics for long. One only has to read a few sentences into "Revenge of the Nerds," our piece on high school policy debaters, to realize how deep and long standing is Rove's love of playing hardball:

It would have been the spring of 1969, the Vietnam War in full swing, when a scrawny 18-year-old in a suit and tie and horn-rimmed glasses pushed a handcart stacked with 10 boxes into a classroom at Olympus High School, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. Each shoebox was stuffed with four-by-six notecards pasted with evidence clipped from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. As the young man and his partner unpacked their evidence on a small table at the front of the room, members of the other policy debate team looked on in horror. They'd only brought one shoebox.

What they didn't know was that 99 percent of the notecards in the Olympus team's 10 shoeboxes were just props. Even at 18, the scrawny kid with the horn-rims understood the power of intimidation."Rove didn't just want to win," James Moore and Wayne Slater write in their book Rove Exposed: How Bush's Brain Fooled America. "He wanted the opponents destroyed. His worldview was clear even then. There was his team and the other team, and he would make the other team pay."

This isn't a man that's going to be content going back to Texas and raising chickens. And though the 2006 rout of the RNC may taken the bloom off Rove's rose somewhat, "the architect" has still got to be a highly sought-after campaign consultant. Provided he can modernize his direct mail data mining/smear expertise to dovetail with the whole cell phone/social networking/video wave of the future. But let's assume he can.

So any bets as to where Rove will pop up? Fred Thompson seems to be running as the "most like Bush" candidate; could that strategy include Rove? Will Rove sit this election out entirely, perhaps scouting the next feckless son of a prominent politician?

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Talking of quitters... We've now got a second candidate out of the Republican presidential race. Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore was the first to go (he dropped out in mid-July) and yesterday Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson followed him.

Thompson had more or less wagered everything on Iowa, and after finishing sixth in Saturday's straw poll he decided to call it quits. Here are the full results of the straw poll, which I remind you, aren't worth much. But nevertheless, take a good look at John McCain's numbers. He didn't campaign in the poll (nor did Giuliani or Fred Thompson), but heavens to Betsy:

- Mitt Romney 32% (bought his victory)
- Mike Huckabee 18% (he's funny!)
- Sam Brownback 15%
- Tom Tancredo 14%
- Ron Paul 9%
- Tommy Thompson 7% (see ya!)
- Fred Thompson 1% (now the lone Thompson)
- Rudy Giuliani 1%
- Duncan Hunter 1%
- John McCain <1% (101 of 14,302 votes cast)
- John Cox <1%

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