While one can’t help but admire Rove’s skills as a politico, I’ve never liked “Rovism” in terms of running the White House in such a way that everything was about partisan advantage and the next election.

Wasn't it the Clintons that created the permanent campaign?

So, in other words, it's like that deliberately? Too bad - I'd love to see him get terse in a more serious interview.

Yes, actually James missed the fact that the interview was "condensed," which was posted at the bottom of the article:

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON

I wonder what Alexander Hamilton would say about our era of negative politics.

It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.

One does get the sense from reading the interview, though, the he’s prepared to take it as well as dish it out and that he can take losses without whining or throwing allies under the bus to bolster his own rep. There’s something admirable about that, too.

Well done, Mr. Joyner. I have been wondering if you were becoming biased in your analyses but apparently there is hope for you yet.

especially for the terseness of his responses.

If you aren't a regular reader of the Times, you might not realize that these "interviews" by Solomon are terse by design. They are always one page and include a full body picture of the interviewee.

Also, Solomon always gets cute with her questions--that's part of the feature.

I wouldn't consider this a "real" interview in the traditional journalistic sense.

One does get the sense from reading the interview, though, the he’s prepared to take it as well as dish it out and that he can take losses without whining or throwing allies under the bus to bolster his own rep.

And he is also prepared to go on...

And laugh at the devil as his train rolls by.

Allision Krauss and Union Station.

And please, before anyone accuses me of calling anyone a devil; it's a metaphor for the past election.

Slow Joe has been in the Senate for what 30 plus years and he accoumplished what? He is a poster boy for what is wrong with Washington.

I think what bugs me is that the GOP is blamed for the divisiveness whether they are the party in power or the party out of power as if the democrats are paragons of virtue on the issue.

I took at look at the interview again, and it's even more appalling the second time around. The idiotic interviewer actually has the gall to editorialize and say "Remember, attack politics are out. It’s a new age of civilized discourse. " Look, if Thomas Jefferson and John Adams - intellectuals and Enlightenment Men as much as they could possibly be - could go into negative politics, what makes her think that it will disappear in an age where the technology makes negative politics all-the-easier?