You have to chuckle as the liberal media vent about the departure of Karl Rove--some in editorials or opinion columns, others letting their personal views color what are presented as news stories. It is almost as if someone is running off with their punching bag and they are trying to get in a few last belts before it's carried out the White House gates.
Or maybe they think that they can't trust Karl Rove--at a mere 56 and still a political bull brimming with testosterone--to truly retire into some Texas buttercup field. They must try one last time for a disabling cut. They want him discredited, GONE. (For a more fitting story, see Grover Norquist's column for the Washington Post.) The attempts on his political life won't work, of course, and that must surely make Rove smile. Another Last Laugh for "the Architect."
Meanwhile, we have accompanying news accounts of all the other big name White House staff departures of the past year. You would think that the corridors of the West Wing were suddenly echoing with emptiness.
On a related topic, in the new issue of The Atlantic(September--not online), we are invited to voyeuristic enjoyment of an attack by former presidential speech writer Matthew Scully on his former colleague and superior, Chief Presidential Speech Writer Michael J. Gerson. The widely proclaimed Evangelical wordsmith, Gerson, is regarded as a fit target by The Atlantic because he has an undoubtedly self-serving memoir coming out and is a newly anointed columnist for The Washington Post.
I don't have a dog in The Atlantic fight. Gerson and Scully are both fine writers and probably fine men. But I wince to see Scully reveal instances of Gerson's supposed greedy pride of authorship while they were both in the White House. Scully probably has merit to his case against his one time friend. But reading it made me uncomfortable about both of them, like walking into an argument between a couple that doesn't concern you.
You see, there is an old fashioned idea of public service that holds that staff are not to be treated as principals and should not be regarded as such by outsiders. Nobody elected them. All their glory is reflected.
Oddly, it has to be said of Rove that he seems to have understood this old standard, because at least he employed it to avoid attention to himself. He was famously unavailable for interviews. He might have had better press if he had behaved otherwise, but it's doubtful that his boss would have benefited.
Speechwriters especially are supposed to be almost anonymous. I approve of that standard and think that conservatives at least should try to preserve it. It is unseemly for speech writers to talk about their elected boss as if he were almost incidental to their clever delineation of policy. It is a bit silly, too. Do these people think that because they write the literal words the busy president mouths that they have created his very ideas and programs?
Typical fulsome praise for the Boss aside (and fulsome praise is embarrassing to read, too!), are they aware that they are obviously posing as ventriloquists? At least let the President get out of office before you start taking credit for his achievements. (By the way, speechwriters never take responsibility for presidential mistakes--including verbal gaffes--do they?)
I have to admit that I don't come to this judgment about prideful political staff with a completely clean conscience. As a young man I was toasted in the Seattle media for the work I did writing position papers for two mayor candidates, both of whom lost. It only occurred to me later that foes of my candidates, including in the media, were using applause for me--the "idea man"--as a way to diminish by implication the candidates who hired me. Showing off was too much a pleasure to allow me to reflect enough on the reality. I tried to tell myself that my moment of fame was actually good for the candidates I worked for. But that was wrong. There are times when an aide should go public, as when he needs to defend the candidate or officeholder, or to elaborate on the principal's views. But those times should be rare.
In the Reagan White House it was the "pragmatists" like OMB Director David Stockman and Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Darman who most often leaked positive accounts of themselves to the media. The same stories were usually negative toward the President. Reagan conservatives tended to maintain discipline, and that included almost all the speechwriters.
The White House Writers Group is an organization originally composed of former Reagan White House Presidential speech writers and it's good to note that they are making a very nice living these days from their post-government prose. But while they were in the White House, the folks I know from that group didn't try to grab the spotlight. Their discretion didn't conduce to their fame, perhaps, but in my book it conduced to their honor.
So who is running the White House now? Well, guess what, he has an able vice president, but the true "eminence griese," the hidden hand of the Bush Administration turns out to be--fanfare, please--George W. Bush.
What a surprise.