Rove announces departure: what does it mean?

Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush's twin Presidential campaign victories, has announced that he will depart his position at the White House within a month's time. I am one politics watcher who never expected this to happen, but here it is. The exact meaning of the event, however, is a bit difficult to figure out.

In one sense, there really was no point for rove to have a job with the second administration of Bush the younger. You see, the whole point to Rove was for him to wage the "permanent campaign"- by which political paybacks and calculations were constatnly injected into every consideration that crossed Bush's desk. That, Rove clearly argued, is how you get elected and stay elected- by viewing governance as simply the other face of electioneering. But once you get elected to your second term as president, need I even state the obvious, there is no legal way to serve a third term. What was he doing occupying that valuable office space? Well, even when you are a lame duck perhaps Rove was helpful in engineering paybacks and dirty tricks such as the attorney firing episode. Maybe we have just reached the point that W has noticed that his "legacy" is in tatters- an inevitable result of the "permanent campaign" philosophy that nothing matters beyond winning.

Or maybe there is a simpler explanation. Perhaps the cooler heads in the administration have figured out that Rove is the most tempting target for Congressional Dems, and that there is plenty of fire underneath the smoke of rumored deal making and dirty trick engineering. By this logic, the Congressional subpoena power is a baseball bat over Rove's head,  he has become a liability similar to the early Rumsfeld liability, and therefore had to be jettisoned to lighten the load. As W is found of saying, the historians will have to chew on that one. And after all, he's just a political spin doctor- he does not need an office, you can call him up on the phone if you want any advice or a list of dirty trick ideas.

Well, whatever the reason, I do not mind to see him go. In a larger sense, I think he has made his mark. When the "permanent campaign" got results, everybody in politics noticed. Of course, I think we all noticed the downside as well. The Presidential approval ratings have dived down to around 30%, and at this point a few firings will not get them back up. (Although Rove issued a parting prediction that those numbers will bounce back up, and better news will soon come from Iraq) It's a deal with the devil. I wonder if future Presidential candidates will be willing to make that deal again, or if this is the actual end of Rove's career, period.