Karl Rove, Bullish on the Budget and the Border--Dana Millbank--WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501217.html?referrer=email


It's a heck of a curse.

Presidential adviser Karl Rove had almost finished his appearance yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute when it happened. Discussing the Bush administration's record on illegal immigration, he blurted out, "We're doing a heck of a job."

President Bush made the phrase a national shorthand for incompetence when he bestowed it on FEMA Director Mike "Brownie" Brown in the days after Hurricane Katrina. And Rove knew he stepped in it yesterday. First, he said the administration was doing "a heck of a lot better, uh, job of getting control of the border." Then he uttered the forbidden phrase, and it sent him into a syntactical tailspin: "We're doing a heck of a job -- lot better job at getting, at getting, uh, the -- the problem of catch-and-release under control."

Rove has a lot on his mind these days -- a fact hinted at in the introduction to his speech by AEI President Christopher DeMuth. "In Washington, the hens are clucking and pecking and the sharks are circling," DeMuth observed. "Still, he goes about his work with discipline, serenity, never permitting himself to lapse into vitriol at the unfairness of it all, even in circumstances of flagrant unfairness."

Among the unfair circumstances: Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald still has not released Rove from the probe into the Valerie Plame case. Add to that the unfairness of a Harris poll last week that put Bush's support at 29 percent. And top it off with the flagrant unfairness of new White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten stripping Rove of his policy duties.

Rove:" But I'm absolutely confident that . . . we're going to be just fine in the fall elections."

THE WORD IS HE KNOWS HE'S BEEN PRE-EMPTIVELY PARDONED, AND THE DIEBOLD MACHINES AND THE "SPECIAL PROGRAMMING" ARE ALL LOADED.