Rich: Have you seen Carl M. Cannon’s piece over at National Journal? An excerpt:

Rove’s brilliance as a campaign operative did not translate to policy successes. This truism has been noted this week, but except for a timely piece in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, it has not been examined very deeply. The shorthand version is that the political hack failed at governing because policy prescriptions are more subtle than attack ads. The truth about Rove’s failures inside the government is more complicated than that — and more inexplicable. Rove’s initiatives didn’t fail because he didn’t master the policy details: He can extemporaneously give a Fidel Castro-length speech on the actuarial problems plaguing Social Security. He’s not wrong about that — it’s straight math, and the numbers don’t lie. But the Bush second-term agenda failed because Rove, the political maestro, didn’t master the politics of passing legislation and keeping everyone happy in the aftermath. In the first term, prior to 9/11, Bush spent most of his time promoting two ambitious domestic policy priorities. One of them, across-the-board tax cuts, was venerable old-line conservatism. It passed, narrowly, on a virtual party-line vote. The other first-term success story, the No Child Left Behind Act, was a signature initiative of compassionate conservatism. It passed with overwhelming support in both parties. To obtain that result, Team Bush made funding promises (that were only partially kept, thereby later alienating key Democrats), and a huge concession: Namely, stripping private school vouchers out of the bill. In the second term, the old-line conservative issue was fixing Social Security, and the compassionate conservative item was immigration reform. Both of these were in Rove’s bailiwick, and had Bush’s total backing. Bush had said at the outset of his second term that he’d spend his political capital getting them enacted, but neither became law. Why? Well, Bush’s falling stock because of Iraq had a lot to do with it, but so did the administration’s imperious treatment of congressional leaders, some of it by Rove, and its amnesia when it came to compromise. Democrats, pointedly not invited to participate in the legislative process, took the hint and refused to use up any of their own political capital to help Bush. Republicans, weakened over the war, would only do so much. Few Capitol Hill lawmakers felt they owed Bush — or Rove — anything. This is the result of the malpractice of politics, not policy. If Rove was as good as his reputation, it wouldn’t have gone that way.