It looks like dubya's brain is resigning at the end of the month. My first thought when I read the news was that it was just another rat deserting the rapidly sinking ship of this administration, but this isn't just another rat. This is the smart rat that all the other rats look to for strategy in the quest for a permanent rat majority. This is Ben.

While I believe it's possible that Rove is running away from this administration, I'd bet money it's not because of the feeble investigations and hearings the Dems are holding into the US Attorney firings. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Valerie Plame outing, who is by all accounts a pretty sharp guy, had Rove in front of a grand jury on multiple occasions and was never able to lay a glove on him. The Dems haven't even managed to get him to testify, let alone force his resignation. In his own words:

When asked for his reaction to those who say he's being "run out of town," Rove responded, "That sounds like the rooster claiming to have called up the sun."

No, this guy's not easily frightened. For years he's been two steps ahead of everyone who's tried to hold him accountable in any way for his actions, probably three steps ahead of Congressional Democrats, and I feel certain that's still the case. The real reasons for his leaving are known only to the evil genius himself, but I will venture a couple of guesses.

First, as I said above, it's possible that he is distancing himself from this administration, but if so, it's not because of anything happening right now. Nothing catches Rove by surprise, so it would have to be something that's about to happen, some particularly nasty allegation about to come to light. This strikes me as unlikely simply because the nastiest things about this administration would appear to already be common knowledge - kidnapping, torture, warrant-less wiretapping, complete disregard for our constitution - all common knowledge, and all things Rove and the administration have managed to spin as necessary for them to protect Amurka. I just can't see how there could be anything else out there that's bad enough to chase Rove out of DC. Unless (gasp) the preznit got a hummer from an intern or something.

My second guess is simply that Rove has finished what he came to DC to do, the systematic politicization of every department of our government is complete. We've had six-plus years of dubya's - or rather Rove's - political appointees forcing out high-level career bureaucrats and replacing them with young, arrogant, right-wing zealots from Regent University and the like. Dubya's legacy will always be tied to his debacle in Iraq, but Karl Rove leaves as his legacy a government that is perhaps forever changed, because even after this administration leaves office, the bureaucracy - the machine that is our government - will continue to be manipulated and controlled by people whose politics are inherently hostile to the very bureaucracy in which they work.

We've already seen some results of what this entails in the complete decimation of what used to be FEMA. In the years ahead, we'll hear increasingly shrill complaints from the right about how our government is incapable of efficiently providing basic services. And we'll see numerous sober policy papers and editorials generated by right-wing think tanks recommending that we solve this "crisis" by privatizing virtually every aspect of our government. Like I said, two steps ahead, maybe more.