Where's Karl Rove?

"He waxed at length about Harry S. Truman's creation of the National Security Council and Clinton's National Economic Council, and how both institutions have made the modern president stronger and more effective.

"His point was that presidents often come to adopt institutions and policies created by their predecessors, and Rove clearly suggests that this will one day happen as well to the institutions and policies shaped by Bush. . . .

"He said that the biggest Bush legacy will be what he terms the 'Bush doctrine.' . . .

"Rove rejected the suggestion that future presidents might be deterred from the Bush doctrine by the enduring violence and unintended consequences let loose by the invasion of Iraq. 'Could be,' he said. 'But it has a logic of force and nature and reality that will cause people to examine it, adjust it, test it, resist it -- but ultimately embrace it.' . . .

"The inference is that while would-be presidents may criticize tactics such as his military tribunals and warrantless electronic surveillance, they will come to recognize the necessity of such policies in a protracted struggle against Islamic radicalism."

There is something undeniably muscular about Bush's approach. But Rove's big problem is that it doesn't necessarily work. Sometimes, in fact, it backfires quite spectacularly. And history, I suspect, will only bear that out more and more clearly.

Or, as Paul C. Light, a scholar of U.S. government at New York University, told Abramowitz: "I don't think their gifts to future presidents are particularly grand."

There are some particularly tough questions Rove needs to answer, such as how he justifies his role in the Plame leak. It's not clear whether Abramowitz even asked. But John Lyon writes for the Arkansas News Bureau that at the Little Rock event, "Rove said he was advised by White House counsel not to comment on Libby's conviction."

Signing Statements and National Security Letters

John Solomon and Barton Gellman write in The Washington Post: "A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

"The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 'national security letters.' The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases."

But Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon with an important point overlooked in all the mainstream coverage today: The National Security Letter reporting requirements passed by Congress "were precisely the provisions which President Bush expressly proclaimed he could ignore when he issued a 'signing statement' as part of the enactment of the Patriot Act's renewal into law. Put another way, the law which the FBI has now been found to be violating is the very law which George Bush publicly declared he has the power to ignore. . . .

"It was The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage who first drew attention to the Patriot Act signing statement in a typically superb article, back in March, 2006, which reported: 'When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.' . . .