Commentary: Rove converted politics into a blood sport

Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers

Now leaves the spinmeister himself, Karl Rove, the biggest rat yet to skitter down the hawser of the SS Bush Titanic, heading off to "spend more time with his family" and less time looking over his shoulder for the subpoena servers.

What will the historians say of this pudgy, balding fellow who was called Bush's Brain, the man who so skillfully set the ambushes and laid the bouncing betty mines that would kill or maim far better candidates than the one he helped rise to elected office at least six levels above his competence?

What will they write one day about this man who, more than any other in a century, so polarized and divided a great nation and people and converted the great game of politics into a blood sport, a killing sport?

There was a time when politicians of both major parties could beat each other around the head and shoulders all day long in the halls of Congress and then when the sun went down head off together to a friendly bar to sit and drink and talk and laugh together like the old friends they were.

There was a time when both political parties were ruled by moderates, by people who thought through and civilly debated the issues of their time and could even be persuaded of the wisdom of another's ideas without an exchange of either cash or artillery fire.

Who outside the inner circle of the Bush White House or the Cro-Magnon Wing of the Grand Old Party or a few journalist hacks bartering their souls for "access" would want to sit down and have a drink with Karl Rove?

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