John Moltz

The real answer

I feel like I keep bringing this up, but people keep asking, "Why has Bush misstepped so badly this year? When will Rove find his game?"

It should be patently obvious that Bush hasn't "misstepped". He's continued to do exactly what he's always done. What's happened is that the miasma of blind allegiance generated by 9/11 and misdirected to the most right-wing administration in decades has lifted from Democrats, the press and the nation.

This piece on Bush War discusses the change (link via This Modern World).

What went so wrong so quickly? It was as if these notorious practitioners of hardball, smash-mouth politics had never even considered the prospect that they might have to absorb a punch at some point themselves.

After all, they never really had. And watching their façade crack in seeming slow motion, you might have been tempted to wonder if the myth of Karl Rove’s genius, and George Bush’s invincibility, owed as much to everyone else’s failings as to their side’s successes.