Cynical, power-hungry, hard-ball politics were not invented by Machiavelli, even though we often invoke the adjective he inspired.  Rather, Machiavelli is the Italian Han Fei Tzu (ca. 280-233 BC).  Han is primarily concerned with how the ruler can maintain his personal control over his court and the government more generally.  He advocates for strict rules and severe punishments, and an occasional inducement, to keep everyone in line. 

     There is not much about him on the web. The standard edition of his thought is still available, and it is from that that we can discern the answers to two questions:

      – What was Karl Rove’s mistake?

      – Why will Bush not fire him?

     In the section of Han’s book entitled, "The Ten Faults," the very first political mistake he mentions is: To practice petty loyalty and thereby betray a larger loyalty.

      He illustrates the idea with reference to a story of how a lowly page, in trying to serve his ruler’s personal interest, winds up causing his death.  Oops.  This is basically where Rove also went wrong.  In trying to defend the "petty loyalty" of protecting Bush from the relatively modest embarrassment of Joseph Wilson’s revelation of the bad intelligence behind the State of the Union speech in 2003, he betrayed the "larger loyalty" of not putting his ruler in an even more difficult position.  Now, Bush has to say that either he did not know what his key political strategist was up to (and why would Rove have classified information anyway?) or that he knew that he was outing a covert CIA agent.  He – Bush – is either ignorant or breaking the law: not a politically appealing choice of public persona.

     But Bush will not fire Rove.  Han Fei Tzu, who is deeply distrustful of ministers, knows that once a minister – or, in this case a political counselor – has demonstrated absolute loyalty to the ruler, that minister is a very valuable asset and must be heeded.  The eighth of the Ten Faults is: To fail to heed your loyal ministers when you are at fault, insisting upon having your own way, which will in time destroy your good reputation and make you a laughing stock of others.

     Now, for Han, there is a limit on how far the ruler should stand by a loyal minister.  After all, The only reason the ministers do not assassinate their sovereign is that their parties and cliques are not strong enough. (40).  But, in Rove’s case, I imagine Bush can accept the political consequences of keeping Rove, even if it makes him more of a laughing stock for a while; and does not worry too much of a putsch, or some lesser political retaliation, by Rove.  But just imagine the book Rove could write if he was in the mood for retaliation….