Karl Rove is beginning to tease his upcoming memoirs, and told the Austin Statesman that part of the Bush administration's problem was that "there were people who never accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush and acted accordingly." Rove promises to name names in the upcoming book. But look, for the first four years of his presidency, Bush wasn't a legitimate president. Legitimacy is earned, not asserted. The basic test is whether you took home more votes than the other guy. Bush did not. The technical test is whether you win the electoral college. And without acknowledged voting problems in Florida, and particularly in Palm Beach, Bush would not have done that, either. Rove can name names, but it'll be an honor roll, individuals willing to buck the comfortable interpretation that democracy was working perfectly and stability should be pursued at the expense of democracy. What's interesting, though, is that Bush's legitimacy was neither here nor there. He got much more done in his first term, when his legitimacy was in question, than in his second, when a majority had ratified his presidency. He had finally achieved legitimacy -- a "mandate," as he called it -- and the assumption that it conferred political freedom brought his administration to ruin.
