Wherein I Defend Karl Rove

Don't look for this to happen again.

Today's Times story on the fact that Rove is now a talking head singles him and other former and current political insiders out for possibly providing skewed opinions and analysis.

But I don't think that most of them are a problem as compared to the regular bloviators. So far, I've found Rove's analysis to be pretty honest. For instance, in the same column that the article singles out, he says that Obama should "push for a bipartisan issue now before Congress." Subsequently, Barack took a strong bipartisan stance on the gas tax and it has helped him immensely. Rove enjoys sifting through numbers, he enjoys the game of politics, and he is just getting started as a commentator so he is eager to show some objectivity.

On the other hand are many of the career pundits and political has-beens who make up the rest of the punditry scene. Some of them not only very clearly lack objectivity, but they seem to give opinion and analysis not because they believe it to be true, but because they think it will aid their political ideology. Over the past couple of months, Bill Kristol has consistently run amok in the Times' own pages with Obama smears that have often included untrue statements. And a number of right wing commentators on cable seem to give analysis that comes directly from the Rush gameplan, where the objective is to extend the Democratic primary for as long as possible, rather than telling us what they really think. The career pundits and political has-beens seem more prone to this because this is the only political power they've had in the last few years. To Rove, a Newsweek column is nothing. If he wants to sway a political race, he can just make a call to Diebold or whoever.