ROVE RAISES, BUT ANDY TRUMPS :

Bush Rejects Card as Homeland Security Chief (Mike Allen, June 18, 2002, Washington Post)

President Bush has rejected a proposal from several key advisers who urged him to name White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security if Congress approves the administration's plan, administration officials said.

If you know how to read the tea leaves, Washington offers no better spectacle than a high level bureaucratic knife fight and the recent contretemps between Andy Card and his rivals has been a thing of real beauty. We've previously seen how the White House planted the story about Karl Rove taking over the world, with one of the main reasons being to make conservatives think they were winning. Well, it looks like the acolytes of King Karl must have been enjoying those stories because the leak about Andy Card becoming the new Homeland Security Czar has all the earmarks of an attempted coup. No one, repeat no one, would willingly move from being Chief of Staff to take that job. Such a transfer practically defines downward mobility. As Chief you run the country, as Homeland Security Guard you'll barely even know what all your responsibilities are before the next attack hits, which you'll then be blamed for not stopping.

So this Card trial balloon was most likely an attempt by the conservatives to move Card out of the way so they could put a Rove ally in as Chief. But the speed with which it was shot down amply demonstrates that Andy Card is, contrary to his own reports of his imminent demise, still firmly in charge.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 18, 2002 7:37 PM