White House Watch — News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration – washingtonpost.com:
In a timely piece in the Atlantic Joshua Green reviews what he calls “The Rove Presidency”:
“The story of why an ambitious Republican president working with a Republican Congress failed to achieve most of what he set out to do finds Rove at center stage. A big paradox of Bush’s presidency is that Rove, who had maybe the best purely political mind in a generation and almost limitless opportunities to apply it from the very outset, managed to steer the administration toward disaster.”
I think the key to that is the phrase “purely political mind.” Politics is not policy, and being good, even masterful, at one does not confer competence in the other. Winning elections through attack ads, underhanded campaign materials, voter suppression and other means is one thing, but holding that power through good decisions that will withstand scrutiny is a different thing entirely.