Resignation of the Machiavelli of the White House

Karl Rove, the man to whom George Bush owes his presidency of the United States, announced to the Wall Street Journal that he will leave his office in the West Wing of the White House in order to "take care of his family". This justification is little convincing as reason for the departure of the man whom Bush characterizes as the "architect" of his political strategy.

A man of the shadows — he was called by members of the White House press corps "the guy in the back seat" — he was author of all or of nearly all of the dirty tricks that enabled Bush to arrive in power.

His political carreer began early, when he quit his studies in the 1970’s in order to start a club for young conservative Republicans. He was a fervent anti-communist, became a fan of Nixon, then an assistant to George Bush (father). Rove is a member of the family circle.

At the head of a bureau of consultants, he fashioned some of the dirtiest of tricks of political life. In order to evacuate Ann Richard from the post of Governor of Texas in 1994, he started a rumor that she surrounded herself with a team of lesbians. She lost the election. In order to insure the success of George W. Bush in the race for the Republican candidacy, he let it be known that the opponent, leading in the polls, was an unstable man, perhaps a traitor, while prisoner during the war in Vietnam. In the last presidential election he asked a Texas billionaire, a friend of his, to subsidize a group of Vietnam veterans to accuse, in the media, the Democratic candidate of lying about his exploits in that war. We find him again in the campaigns against Fidel Castro and Chavez.

A final stage of combat known concerning his Machiavellian career : the "leak" concerning CIA membership of the wife of ambassador Joseph Wilson, who allowed himself to call a lie a lie concerning the supposed attempt of Saddam Hussein to purchase uranium from Niger. It was Rove who revealed this information to journalists, in order to spread a smokescreen over the presidential lie. Lewis Libby, an intermediary in this maneuver, was condemned to six months in prison, a sentence commuted by George Bush. Rove relied on his position as White House counsellor in refusing to testify to the grand jury and congressional inquiries.

The departure of this intimate friend of Bush comes on top of that of Colin Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, all architects of the ultra-conservative politics that have led to disaster in Iraq, to multiple denials of human rights and liberties, to social policy that is untra-retrograde, disapproved of by a large majority of opinion. He quits a ship of state that is taking on water on all sides, and as the Republican Party gets more and more worried about the 2008 elections.