The Architect Has No Clothes

What the will a Senate majority full of Olympia Snowes and John McCains and Lindsey Grahams get you? Easy. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid in power. This is exactly the legacy of the Bush presidency --and Rove was right there at the levers of power the entire way.

Truth be told, Rove's biggest architectural accomplishment is the Obama administration. By doing his part as senior advisor to the president to define conservatism down, he sullied the reputation and disoriented the understanding of what it means to be conservative to millions of half-informed voters nationwide.

How did this manifest?

It has had a disastrous effect on the outcome of elections across the country since 2006. Frankly, a case can be made that only the Democrats' Wellstone Memorial in 2002 and an awful Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 allowed the perception that the Bush White House had an effective political wing. I submit that they never did. With Bush leaving office at around 26% approval, no one debates that now. This was Rove's wing.

Which raises the question I've had for ten years: can we finally -- once and for all -- bury the myth of the "architect"? With all due respect, putting together a strategy that forged a statistical tie with Gore-Lieberman and edged Kerry-Edwards by 3 points with the power of incumbency is not the stuff of genius.

Lee Atwater would be ashamed of such results. So how did Rove get this reputation?

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H/T: RiehlWorldView