Hailed and mocked as "Bush's Brain" and lionized by President Bush as "boy genius," Karl Rove leaves his historically powerful White House job as the final public stop in a career that relied on the worst in human character.
Rove was the master of smear, lies, dirty campaign tricks, and using government agencies to punish non-Republicans and critics while rewarding political cronies.
It's the nature of America's deteriorating ethics in politics to follow the dictum, "Anything goes."
But even that unseemly credo's atrocious amorality can't possibly describe Rove's bleak cynicism about winning in politics, beginning in his college days when he stole a candidate's letterheads and printed a false message to sabotage the campaign and well into his White House days where he likened Iraq war critics to traitors and treason.
The encyclopedic, authoritative summaries on the Internet of Rove's character assassination methods and abuse of power covers volumes.
Among the most despicable, however:
· Inspiring a whispering campaign that Texas Gov. Ann Richards was a lesbian. Rove's client, George W. Bush defeated Richards.
· Spreading a rumor that Sen. John McCain had fathered a black illegitimate child (McCain and his wife had adopted a Bangladesh orphan).
· Ordering color-coded terrorism alerts to distract media when news about President Bush was unfavorable.
· Encouraging Republican candidates to promote anti-gay platforms, though Rove's stepfather (his father abandoned the family when Rove was a child) was gay.
· Helping form the "Swiftboaters" to smear Sen. John Kerry, a multiple-decorated Vietnam hero, as a phony.
Rove's wreck-and-ruin tactics divided the country, helped create George Bush's reputation as one of history's worst presidents, left the Republican Party tarnished as a rubberstamp for underhanded governance, created public distrust of government and corrupted others to lie and use their authority to benefit Rove's ruthless agenda. This is the work of a genius?
Perhaps in time, Rove will 'fess up to the true extent of his abuses and crimes, as did his Republican mentor, Lee Atwater, who coached Roger Ailes, new president of Fox News, and Rove in the sleaziest of methods for destroying political reputations.
Atwater, who managed campaign strategies for Ronald Reagan and the senior Bush, developed an inoperable brain tumor in 1990. In his final months of life, Atwater set about to prodigiously square his conscience, writing apologies to politicians whom he'd smeared and confessing in magazine articles the awful sins of his ways.
The wait may be long. But maybe Rove will repent and confess when faced with the power of a Decider far more awesome than any mortal man.
