You know, I would imagine that if he dropped dead right here, right now , in a pool of his own vomit, I would not feel any pity or empathy. He makes my skin crawl. He’s like those alien invader movies when you find out the villain is a horrible insect in a “people suit”.
Does that make me a bad person? :eek:
No, of course not! You were already a bad person.
I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog too! 
Can I offer a real quick postmortem of this guy’s track record at the top?
2000: Rovian brilliance earns Bush 49 percent of popular vote against VP who ignores most of his own track record and runs a bad campaign.
2002: Genius begins building “permanent Republican majority” in Congress… that lasts four years.
2004: Three years after September 11 pushed Bush’s approval ratings to 90 percent, a year and a half after America goes to war with Saddam Hussein, evil dark lord gets Bush re-elected with 50 percent of the popular vote against a Democrat who wouldn’t respond to attacks and thought voters wanted him to end the Vietnam War.
2005-present: Bush is unable to reform Social Security or accomplish any major portions of second-term agenda; war becomes unpopular and master strategist is unable to think of a way to defend it or anything else he does.
2006: Democrats retake both Houses of Congress, brilliant Rove tactics defeat a grand total of zero Democratic incumbents.
2007: Rove leaves DC while taking parting shots at Hillary Clinton, terrifying Democrats that he will put his dazzling campaign skills to work in 2008.
Not to say that this guy wasn’t good at anything, but looking at how people have talked about him over the last five years… anybody thinking of reconsidering? This is not an amazing track record, and what he accomplished was largely against losers.
Hell, you can have the dog! I’ll leave him tied up in the yard, pick him up any time! Easy to recognize, one ear torn off, three legs, tail broken. Answers to the name “Lucky”.
But the significant part is he accomplished it with losers. He somehow managed to convince a large portion of the American people that George W. Bush was not only capable of being President but was actually a good choice for the job.
I would imagine he had a government credit card, an expense allowance, housing allowance, and a few other perks to ease his economic hardships. But then, I’ve know some GS5 and GS7 people living in the LA area (a pretty expensive place) who dodn’t have these extra things. Sorry, but his story doesn’t sound like it’s the whole story.
Twice. After seeing his performance the first time around.
Bush wasn’t that pathetic as a candidate. Yes, he couldn’t string a sentence together, but as roughly a billion people have said before me, he managed to be reasonably personable and down-to-earth when Gore completely failed to do so, and wouldn’t talk about what he and Clinton had done for eight years.
I’m not saying Rove has no campaign skills. He reached out to different groups effectively, and he was better than the other guys, which is what really matters I guess. His major achievement was probably getting Bush re-elected, but Iraq wasn’t as unpopular then and Kerry made a few dumb choices. Just today in GD, somebody posted a statistical analysis (based on what, I’m not exactly sure) saying historical trends show Bush should have won the election by a much larger margin than he did.
The track record there - and I didn’t even mention the fact that Bush is so unpopular that Republican candidates were avoiding him in 2006, and the 2008 crop is doing the same - does not show this man is a terrifying evil genius, a Rommel of the campaign trail. Unless the Democrats have learned nothing at all over the last few years (always a possibility, but one that I think is contradicted by the evidence), nobody should be too scared of him advising another candidate this year.
If Rove is Bush’s brain, it’s time to start quoting that Star Trek episode about “Brain and brain? What is brain!” Or you could go with that Simpsons episode where Homer becomes head of the union, and Burns says “I’m beginning to think Homer Simpson isn’t the brilliant tactician I thought he was.”