Karl Rove to the Rescue (Again)

Political Wire points to TIME and WP for the bad press vacation and the new strategy

TIME: President Bush "seemed so regularly out of it last week, it made you wonder if he was stuck in the same White House bubble of isolation that confined his dad. Too often, W. looked annoyed. Or he smiled when he should have been serious. Or he swaggered when simple action would have been the right move."

The reason? "Members of the A team were on vacation: chief of staff Andy Card was in Maine; Dick Cheney was in Wyoming; even Condoleezza Rice was out of town, shoe-shopping in Manhattan. Many of Bush's best p.r. minds, including media adviser Mark McKinnon, were in Greece at the wedding of White House communications director Nicolle Devenish."

Washington Post: "Facing what is clearly a full-scale political disaster, Rove and a handful of other masterful political operatives have gone into overdrive. They are back in campaign mode."

"This campaign is to salvage Bush's reputation."

"It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent. It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the 'blame game.' While at the same time, it is utterly political in nature and heavily reliant on shifting the blame elsewhere."