Downgrading Rove

If any good comes from the Justice Department scandal, aside from adiosing Alberto Gonzales, it will be reclassifying Karl Rove from Bush’s Brain to lower parts of his anatomy, front and back.

From the welter of contradictory statements and revealing e-mails emerges a picture, not of a master strategist or shrewd tactician, but the greasy mechanic of the White House sleaze machine who is not too macho to hide behind Harriet Meir’s skirts.

His first significant sighting came on Election Night 2000 just after the networks had called Florida--and the presidency--for Al Gore. With a knowing smile, Rove told a network reporter to wait for the absentee ballots, which we later learned had been rigged by the Bush people.

Fittingly enough, Rove started his career by stealing letterheads from an opponent’s office to send out fake messages and going on to perfect his craft under the tutelage of Nixon’s dirty trickster Donald Segretti.

Maybe now the media can stop calling him by Bush’s nickname, “the architect” and start using the President’s other appellation for him, “turd blossom.”