I read more about Karl Rove today than any vacationing pundit should. Almost all of it demonstrated that bloggers are easily a match for the dreaded MSM when it comes to riding down from the hills and shooting the wounded. Rove, architect of an unpopular presidency, is leaving? Well good riddance! Even Michelle Malkin, who makes Terry Corcoran look like Rick Salutin, was celebrating Rove's departure today -- although, as loyalists will, only because she judges him to have harmed the Republican franchise.

Of the blogs I perused, only this guy gets at a few home truths, the first one being: when you get a guy as lame as George W. Bush elected president twice -- well, selected and then elected, but let's not be fussy -- you'll get to backseat-drive the way someone else does it. Dubya's 2004 victory was far from a shoo-in. Rove ensured that there was a Bush presidency, and therefore that his guy got to show up for every important American and global political battle for nearly a decade. It is a bit rich to blame Rove if Bush bungled so many of those showdowns. Put another way: if I am the President and I see New Orleans sinking beneath the freaking waves, it is no particular fault of Karl Rove's if I don't find that an important event.

Of lesser significance, but still interesting, is Ambinder's insight about  Rove's insight about precisely how much reporters matter and how much they don't. In that way, at least, Rove still has eager students in Ottawa. So when I see Stephen Harper welcoming his entire Cabinet at 24 Sussex, which every news bureau in Ottawa is staking out, and I assume that somebody must be gaming somebody -- well, that's an odd tribute to Rove.