Another Yawnshell

The McClellan bombshell du jour is that Karl Rove should have been fired.

Mon dieu, did the man even read his own book? Didn't he claim that one of the Bush Administration's failures has been “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance”? Which I think is an accurate statement, though hardly a shocker. Frankly, the last White House that hasn't been in permanent campaign mode was Jerry Ford's (and doesn't that former joke-butt look better by the day?). Bush, typically, took an executive power trick that had been done for decades behind thick curtains and darkened glass and performed it right out on the front lawn where it would scare the horses.

But here's McClellan, now saying:

WASHINGTON - President Bush broke his promise to the country by refusing to fire aide Karl Rove for leaking a CIA agent's identity, said Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman for almost three years.

"I think the president should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said Sunday in a broadcast interview about his new tell-all book, a scathing rebuke of the White House under Bush's leadership.

Wrong. Karl Rove never should have been allowed to get near the White House. All he does is run campaigns and political plays. He's the kind of necessary evil that gets you into power whom you then reward with a cushy ambassadorial post on some tropical island far, far from the place where you intend to govern.

Then bring him back three years later.

But I doubt we've learned anything from this episode. The next president will just have to re-install the curtains and opaque glass, and we'll go back to pretending all is as it should be.

Quickies

[Posted by reader_iam]

It's amazing to me how unbloggable I've found even major news stories, recently. Perhaps I'm suffering from some sort of hype-fatigue. Who knows? In any case, here's a partial list of my reactions to some stuff, big and small, that's been in the headlines:

1) Rove's departure. "Anti-climactic."

2) Chavez's move to consolidate power over the longer term. "Satisfyingly, though distressingly, predictable. People who didn't think this would happen right on schedule are the same sort who think George Bush won't leave office as scheduled--in short, fools."

3) Petraeus' report to be written by White House! "What's shocking or even surprising about this? Among other things, the Commander in Chief lives and works there, for good or for ill. In any case, I don't remember certain members of our Congress being so all-fire eager to get information from the horse's mouth when they boycotted a briefing with Petraeus a few months back. Political hay, plain and simple. The report is and was going to be criticized--or embraced, depending--regardless of its technical author."

4) AT&T issues book-length iPhone bills. "It figures, knowing what I know about that culture (based on some consulting experience years ago). And isn't it a charming touch to have text messages compiled and printed out? I've come to the conclusion that Icepick is right, and these "bills" are a good and healthy reminder: Any privacy we think we have is an illusion; corporate America has pretty much our entire lives in databases and, our protests to the contrary notwithstanding, most of us do and will continue to willingly and eagerly enable that, mostly for convenience."

5) Scott Thomas Beachamp: "The triumph of truthiness. And where did anybody get the idea that major fact-checking takes place anywhere in newspapers and magazines anymore? The very idea that departments of fact-checking still meaningfully exist is a quaint anachronism. I mean, what the heck--are we confusing TNR with the New Yorker circa 1955, or what? Make no mistake, I believe fervently in the importance of fact-checking. I just don't believe it takes place particularly rigorously anywhere anymore, for most part."

6) Campaign 2008: "Nails, meet chalkboard. Does anyone truly like picturing any of the candidates as president, much less find them inspiring? And whose idea was it to turn our traditionally already too-long campaign season into a freakin' marathon? I can't decide whether they're trying to irritate or numb us into submission, but in either case, it's darn near a criminal offense, and I resent it. So there."

Enough for now.