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Now is it any wonder amidst the volatile stock market, excessive scandals involving the current administration, the conviction and pardoning of Scooter Libby that Republican spin doctor and strategist Karl Rove has followed Donald Rumsfeld into the ranks of Bush defectors. Karl “the architect” and “boy genius” Rove announced his resignation today to an apathetic United States who are more concerned with their plummeting 401K’s, the trouble brewing in the Middle East and the importing of tainted goods from China. There was no fanfare, there was no big celebration, there was just one man who was quietly trying to slink off into obscurity and out of the public eye that had already grown tired of the continual controversies and scandals surrounding Rove that he managed to squirm out of due to his close friendship with the administrations leaders. While the infamous gangster John Gotti was known as “The Teflon Don”, Rove could equally be tagged as “The Teflon Con” because nothing ever seemed to stick to him.

Karl Christian Rove was on board from the beginning of Bush’s political career, first helping Bush when he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978. Rove was instrumental in engineering George W. Bush’s two presidential campaigns. His expertise at polarizing issues to draw Christian Fundamentalist voters from the pulpits using the fear of “gay marriage” made Rove one of the President’s most valuable players. Rove’s usage of the “I-4″ corridor in Florida to bring out voters who are not normally a faction to be dealt with and his panhandling to the Cuban voters in South Florida who were still enraged over the Elian Gonzalez controversy served to execute a “saving grace” that helped the Bush administration cling to a narrow victory.

From his biography, it’s intersting to note a young Karl Rove in 1960, at the age of nine, decided to support Richard Nixon. It seems that nine year old never grew up or learned any lessons from the impeachment of Richard Nixon in one of the the United states biggest disgraces ever by a President. Instead it would seem Rove decided to get behind and support somebody with similar qualities, values and practices as his childhood hero Richard Nixon.

Rove’s educational status is also quite interesting to analyze. In addition to attending the University of Utah and the University of Maryland, Rove attended George Mason University from 1973 to 1975, and the University of Texas at Austin in 1977. Rove didn’t earn a degree from any of the institutions he attended and in July 1999, the Washington Post quoted Rove as stating “I lack at this point one math class, which I can take by exam, and my foreign language requirements”. Ironically, Rove’s first honorary degree was from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University in 2004. Is it any wonder?

On Rove’s way out the door today, he was quoted as saying “I’m Moby Dick and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab, So they’re going to keep coming”. This was in response to Rove’s ties to former White House aide Scooter Libby who was convicted on charges of lying and obstructing justice, only to be pardoned of his prison sentence by President Bush. The Libby trial involved allegations that Rove was one of the administrative officials who leaked the name of the CIA officer Valerie Plame in an attempt to exact revenge on her husband Joseph Wilson, for his statements that the White House manipulated intelligence to make a case for invasion of Iraq. In a more recent controversy, Rove refused to testify before Congress about the firing of US attorneys, citing executive privilege. Rove was also quoted as stating his resignation would not stop lawmakers from investigating him.

As Karl Rove journeys off into the great unknown, he can catch up on the paradoxical poetry of one of his fellow Bush camp defectors, Donald Rumsfeld…

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Exerpted from : http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/