The Unbelievable Karl Rove

Here's the transcript of Bolten's interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

"BLITZER: A couple of days before the election, the vice president, Dick Cheney, said this to ABC News. He said: 'The president has made clear what his objective is, it's victory in Iraq, and full speed ahead on that basis. And that's exactly what we are going to do.'

"And the question was irrespective of what happened in the elections. Here is the question. Is that statement from the vice president still applicable?

"BOLTEN: Sure. Everybody's objective here is to succeed in Iraq."

Here's Bolten on ABC News. Here's Bartlett on Fox News.

So let me make sure I have this straight: Bush is for "full speed ahead" in Iraq, as well as a complete re-evaluation of his plans; and nothing is off the table, except for the many things that are not negotiable.

Isn't this precisely the sort of nonsensical rhetoric about Iraq that presumably turned voters off on Tuesday?

Poll Watch

Marcus Mabry writes for Newsweek: "President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to just 31 percent, according to the new Newsweek Poll. . . .

"Worst of all, most Americans are writing off the rest of Bush's presidency; two thirds (66 percent) believe he will be unable to get much done, up from 56 percent in a mid-October poll; only 32 percent believe he can be effective. . . .

"And there's massive support for much of the Democratic Congress's presumed agenda."

The Honeymoon

Ken Herman writes for Cox News Service with the question on everyone's mind in Washington: "Bipartisan peace in our times, or temporary ceasefire . . .

"'Both sides have been magnificent so far,' Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution, said at a Friday seminar. 'Everybody's bipartisan. It's going to last at least another half hour.' "

The change in tone, at least as of this writing, is truly incredible. Remember that until the middle of last week, anyone who disagreed with Bush was an idiot or an appeaser -- and sure as heck wasn't welcome anywhere near the White House.

On Thursday, Bush graciously hosted incoming House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steny Hoyer. On Friday, he welcomed Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin.

Warm words were exchanged by all -- or, rather, almost all. Cheney reportedly didn't say a word during the Pelosi lunch, and sat glumly on the couch as the others spoke.

But Cheney may have gotten the last laugh. In prepared remarks after a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Bush threw down one potential gauntlet, calling on the lame-duck Congress to pass a warrantless wiretapping plan opposed by Democrats. And later that day, Bush renominated John R. Bolton to be United Nations ambassador.

Bolton Watch

Helene Cooper writes in the New York Times: "President Bush has pledged to be a bipartisan consensus builder now that Democrats are to control Congress, and since Wednesday he has made conciliatory gestures. The question now is whether Mr. Bush is ready to junk all of his make-nice pledges in order to keep John R. Bolton at the United Nations. . . .

"[W]ith the announcement on Thursday by Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, that he would deny Republicans on the committee the last vote needed to send Mr. Bolton's nomination to the full Senate, some administration officials privately acknowledge that Mr. Bolton's chances of confirmation are 'nil,' one State Department official said. . . .

"In this situation, the usual next step would be for Mr. Bolton to withdraw from consideration and for Mr. Bush to nominate a less polarizing candidate. . . .

"But Mr. Bolton is keen to stay at the helm of the American team at the United Nations, administration officials say, and White House officials, including Mr. Bush's counsel, Harriet E. Miers, have been looking into whether the president can somehow bypass the Senate and keep him there. Administration officials said Vice President Dick Cheney was backing exploration of such a move.

"Mr. Bolton 'could be named acting permanent representative or deputy U.N. ambassador or something else that doesn't require confirmation,' a senior administration official said. . . .

"Such a move would almost certainly enflame relations between the White House and the ascendant Democrats and would probably kill any further talk about bipartisan cooperation."

The Lie

Howard Kurtz writes in Friday's Washington Post: "Six days before the election, Bush told three wire-service reporters in an interview that Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were doing 'fantastic' jobs.

"'You see them staying with you until the end?' asked Terence Hunt of the Associated Press.

"'I do,' Bush replied.

"'So you're expecting Rumsfeld, Secretary Rumsfeld, to stay on the rest of your time here?' asked Steve Holland of Reuters.

"'Yes, I am,' the president said."

Seven days later, at the press conference during which he announced Rumsfeld's resignation, Bush acknowledged he had misled the reporters. He explained that "the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer." See my Thursday column for more.

But at Thursday's press briefing, press secretary Tony Snow insisted Bush was being honest when he said that he expected Rumsfeld to stay.

Snow: "At that point, although there had been conversations about how to proceed at the Pentagon, there had been no job offer to Bob Gates, there was no clear sense that there would be a resignation pending, and therefore, would you expect the president to say, 'Don't know, let me get back to you, trying to think that one through.' The fact is, at that point, that reflected his thinking. But on the other hand, there were conversations going on."

Q: "Cut and dried question, Was it an honest statement?

Snow: "It was an honest statement."

Here's Josh Bolten going round and round with George Stephanopoulos on ABC yesterday:

Stephanopoulos: "At the time by the president's own admission he had a series of discussions with Secretary Rumsfeld. Bob Gates was coming to Crawford just a few days later on Sunday and according to several reports, you were leading a process to at least consider the replacement of Secretary Rumsfeld. Given all that, how could the president say he was expecting Secretary Rumsfeld to stay the rest of the term?"

Bolten: "He was unless he found a suitable replacement. He had started the conversations with Secretary Rumsfeld, and they were -- they were in the process of agreeing that fresh eyes would be needed on the problem. They did not come to that agreement until after the interview that the president had."

Stephanopoulos: "But he was searching for a replacement, actively searching for a replacement then."

Bolten: "He was talking about it. . . . The president was not going to replace Secretary Rumsfeld unless he was confident that he had a very strong replacement available to him to put in place."

Stephanopoulos: "So are you saying that if Bob Gates would have said no the president would have simply stopped the process?"

Bolten: "Yes, I am saying that if -- if Bob Gates had turned out to be the wrong guy, most important, based on the conversation that the president was going to have with him, I do not expect that the president would have replaced Secretary Rumsfeld. And then. . . . "

Stephanopoulos: "That day. But Secretary Rumsfeld would not have served till the end of the term. The president was actively looking to replace him."

Bolten: "I don't know that."

The topic also came up in Bolten's interview on CNN, and Bartlett's on Fox.

John Heilprin writes for the Associated Press that Bolten said "that Bush's misdirection to the press was justified by military need.

"'If he had said something other than what he said, if he had been equivocal about his support for Secretary Rumsfeld, that would have started an outbreak of then warranted speculation about Secretary Rumsfeld's tenure,' Bolten said. 'It would have undermined Secretary Rumsfeld's ability to lead the military in a time of war.'"

So if anyone thought the White House was at least going to be honest about being dishonest, think again.

Then again, there was a tiny bit of refreshing candor from Bartlett, who allowed that the president was concerned with appearances.

"Think about the signal it would have sent two weeks before the election if President Bush, desperate to change political polls, would have jettisoned his secretary of defense. It would have looked desperate," Bartlett said.

Father Knows Best

Michael Duffy writes in Time: "The Greeks believed that the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon their sons. But when it comes to the Bush family and Iraq, the tragedy runs from stem to root. And so over the next few weeks, key members of Bush's father's vaunted foreign policy team -- the real A-team of the Republican foreign policy establishment -- will step in and conduct what amounts to a family intervention. . . .

"The biggest question is how the object of the intervention will react. As one senior official in the 41 White House says of the president, 'He can fight this and turn into a constantly warring figure, or he can turn back into the friendly wise guy who gets along with everyone. The latter will serve him much better.'"

Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks write in The Washington Post: "Nine months after invading Iraq, President Bush told an interviewer that he did not turn to his father for strength. 'There is a higher father that I appeal to,' he said. Nearly three years later, Bush may be appealing to his earthly father as well. Or at least to his people."

Jon Meacham writes in a Newsweek cover story that as of last week, "Dad's team was back -- a remarkable course correction in the political life of the son and, quite possibly, in the life of the nation."

Here's Howard Kurtz on CNN, talking to Ricks:

Kurtz: "Now, turning to the president's nominee to succeed Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, there's an emerging storyline because of Gates and because of Jim Baker, who heads this bipartisan study commission in Iraq, and others who worked for Bush 41's administration that they are kind of riding to the rescue -- in fact, 'Newsweek's' cover-- if we could put it up there -- talks about 'Father Knows Best.' There's the headline.

"Is that storyline just an easy, cheap Oedipal way for the press to characterize what's going on, or is there something to it?

Ricks: "Well, just because it's easy and cheap doesn't mean it's wrong."

More About Gates

David E. Sanger and Scott Shane write in the New York Times: "President Bush selected Robert M. Gates as his new defense secretary in part to close a long-running rift between the Defense Department and the State Department that has hobbled progress on Iraq, keeping the two agencies at odds on issues ranging from reconstruction to detaining terrorism suspects, according to White House officials and members of Mr. Gates's inner circle. . . .

"While Mr. Gates, a former director of central intelligence, had long been considered for a variety of roles, over the past two months Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, quietly steered the White House toward replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld with Mr. Gates, who had worked closely with Ms. Rice under the first President Bush."

But is it too late? And how will Gates circumnavigate Cheney?

Sanger and Shane write: "Mr. Cheney worked for years to protect Mr. Rumsfeld, who had hired him for his first government job, and the top echelons of the Defense Department have been peppered with Cheney protégés."

And as for all that conventional wisdom? Sanger and Shane write that the White House objects. "'It dumbs this whole thing down to say that this is the victory of the pragmatists over the ideologues,' said Daniel Bartlett, the president's counselor, who took part in the secret decisions to oust Mr. Rumsfeld and bring in Mr. Gates. 'We are going to be practical in some respects, and ideological in others.'"

Froomkin Watch

I'll be off tomorrow, speaking to a class at the University of Pennsylvania. The column will return on Wednesday, but then will take a 10-day Thanksgiving break, resuming on Monday, November 27.

Low Expectations

Here's the text of Bush's Saturday radio address: "Whatever your opinion of the outcome, all Americans can take pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections even in a time of war."

Steve Benen blogs: "We should be 'proud' that the federal government didn't cancel our elections? That the Bush administration didn't use the war as an excuse to interrupt the democratic process? . . .

"[T]his seems to have 'soft bigotry of low expectations' written all over it."