Karl Rove to Leave the White House

Karl Rove, largely considered the architect of US President George W. Bush's political success will leave the White House, where he has acted as Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff, to concentrate on the upcoming mid-term Congressional elections, which the Republicans are in serious danger of losing.

Rove has been Bush's right-hand man since long before he was Governor of Texas, and having read up on the man quite a bit (for example, this profile in The New Yorker, it's not too much to say that Rove - a neocon virtually since birth - deliberately sought out the man most likely to become the next Republican president by virtue of bloodline and happenstance and nutured him for the top job.

Rove's departure asks a number of questions. Firstly, how much more deflated will Bush look without one less hand up his keester? Secondly, was Rove gently pushed, given his implication in the Valerie Plame CIA leak scandal? Thirdly, could the fact that Rove is a known opponent of military action Iran be a very bad sign of the Bush administration's intentions for that region?

One thing is certain - the move makes a clear statement that the Republicans finally realise exactly how troubled Bush's presidency is.

Rove's departure comes as part of a wider reshuffle which also sees the exit of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who has had perhaps one of the roughest jobs in the Bush Administration - that is, justifying some truly crappy decisions to a rightly hostile media where his superiors wouldn't go within spitting distance of the press room.