Overstaying History's Welcome

In the L.A. Times, Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on Karl Rove’s legacy, which he compares with another famous tactician of history: “Napoleon overstayed history’s welcome and was treated harshly for it, first by the Russians and Mother Nature, then by his own people and, ultimately, by the historians”:

Partisan victories are nice, but they aren’t an end in themselves. Harry Truman, whom Rove and others see as role models for Bush, himself liked to quote Napoleon on his fateful encounter with the Russians: “I beat them in every battle, but it does not get me anywhere.”

Compassionate conservatism succeeded as a political tactic by co-opting liberal assumptions in much the same way that Bill Clinton’s triangulation stole conservative thunder. Rove was, famously, the architect of this strategy, and as such the left hated him not for his ideas but for his successes, which they now want to emulate at all costs. The net-root “fighting Dems” who care about partisan victory above all else are in many respects the children of Karl Rove.

“What is history,” Napoleon asked, “but a fable agreed upon?” After he pens his memoirs from his Texan Elba, maybe we’ll find out what fable Rove subscribes to: the one in which he was a champion for conservatism, or the one in which he liberated the GOP from conservatism.

Rove’s second term fumbles are yet another reminder why so many cabinet members and White House staffers bail at the end of the first term, a mid-term election, or whenever the getting’s good, rather overstaying history’s welcome.

Update: Video from the Wall Street Journal’s Paul Gigot added above. And click here for related thoughts from Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff, who writes that “Karl Rove was neither a magician nor an evil genius. But he did help his candidates achieve most of what was possible.”