Karl Rove’s departure from the White House will likely have little effect on the policies of the Bush Administration, but its significance as a hallmark in the political soul of the nation is great. It gives us an occasion to reflect on what Rove and the adherents of his political strategies have contributed to how politics are conducted. And it lends itself to inspire us to wonder if the impact he made on that conduct is now rippling to an end.

Americans of any political stripe should hope so. This may sound like a profoundly partisan statement - a sneer at a man who has been a loyal streetfighter for the victory of the Conservative movement. In fact, as a political scientist, I tip my hat to Rove’s record of triumph. But as a citizen who believes in the virtue of both sides of America’s political discourse, I see Rove’s strategies as an insidious toxin in our political system - a chemical WMD that has reliably both won the field and poisoned it. For Rove’s victories were - like many of the policies they then allowed - pyrrhic victories. The reason for this is the principle objective of his strategy: relentless focus on wedge issues.

Wedge issues are issues that divide Americans into two distinct camps. It’s easiest to define what a wedge issue is by defining what it is not.

A “non-wedge” issue would be issues that most Americans differ on how to go about achieving success, but not whether such things should exist at all. The tax code is one issue; national defense is another. By contrast, wedge issues are the issues that divide sharply on whether they should exist or not, and usually have profound emotional associations: abortion, gay marriage, and “right to life” for instance. In all of Rove’s recent campaigns, from 1996 to 2006, he has always relied chiefly on negative statements about opponents coupled with pushing wedge issues into the media agenda.

In doing so, his wedge issues have chiseled away at the political bridge in American political dialogue and cut a Republican Party “base” that leaves many conservatives feeling like they’re in the dust. The advantage of defining a campaign with the emotionally-fierce wedge issues is that it riles up a zealous “base”. This base provides a dependable cadre of voters that will always mobilize in strong numbers for Republicans because of the side of the “wedge” they are on. Meanwhile, swing voters are influenced by the relentless negativity, usually to vote on the basis of a candidate’s sullied character, rather than on their opponent’s policy beneifts - or to not vote at all out of mutual disgust. Rove did not so much as get people to vote /for/ his candidate on issues like national defense as /against/ the other candidate.

The result? Apathy and disappointment among swing voters, and a base that is viciously active and powerfully organized around those wedge issues. As a result of the latter, Republicans - and, even, to the extent that vocal minorities influence the dialogue and thus the agenda - have to pander to the extreme on those wedge issues. That the wedge issues are not the “Reagan Republican” or “Goldwater Republican” priorities of the “western” Republican party, driven by a love of individualism and small government, but the priorities of the “southern” Republican, moralistic and dependent on government enforcement of values, leaves many Republicans stuck in the mud, and the “big tent” with them. Now issues that normally would not unite Republicans of the Goldwater stripe with those of Jerry Falwell’s - such as gays in the military and stem-cell research - embody the Republican base that all GOP candidates must cater to in order to win.

Just as this forces wedge issues to typify the Republican base, it vilifies it. Democrats who otherwise would and have met across the aisle on non-wedge issues are forced into positions of staunch opposition to their GOP counterparts. The result is a divided electorate - one that is increasingly suspicious of the other side even though cooperation is not only necessary, but entirely possible and comfortable. If the caustic, paranoid rhetoric in partisan political commentary that has risen since the mid-90s is not evidence of this enough, looking at the electoral results in Rove’s races shows that the victories he wins are always close calls, and always carried due to a staunch socially conservative base. In short, the wedges have driven us apart, demolishing consensus and leaving it with a feeling of angry void and impending collision.

This is not all Rove’s mantle to bear, but with his record of triumph and ruthlessness in achieving it, he has been its standard bearer. He has helped create an America that votes against, not for; mobilizes to react, not act; distrusts rather than hopes. To follow his example was to be successful; to attempt to resist it was to be seen as outdated or, at best, anomalous. Now that he is gone, will his adherents and their strategies leave with him?

No. Already Clinton and her campaign’s captain, Terry McAuliffe, have taken reflexive negativity to a blitzkrieg level. They mechanically follow Rove’s playbook, tossing the wry positive politics of the last milennium’s final decade out the window in favor of a cynical, manipulative means of sure success. What Rove matured from mere tactics into a full-fledged religion, candidates like Clinton, Edwards and Romney are waging holy war with.

Now America is faced with a dilemma that will not be solved with the departure of one man or the change of nameplates in the White House - it is a wear in the fabric of the nation’s soul. The aberration that was Rove’s strategy has become the rule. And if due censure is not stuck on those who fight and win by it, that rule may one day be synonymous with American politics.

The Democratic candidates for the Presidency attended a debate on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Issues hosted by the Human Rights Campaign in Los Angeles, and ended up showing some significant differences. Surprising, no - but significant, yes. They’ll be broken down below.

KUCHINICH AND GRAVEL: Before getting to the way in which the others are different, we’ll handle the two that may as well be the same. Dennis and Mike both insist that so far as LGBT issues - all issues, actually - are concerned, love is the answer.

No, I’m serious. They said that.

And while they may have a point there on a certain humanist or Christian level, love as an effective governing policy or means of defense has yet to be conceived of. Love’s also pretty subjective in many cases - Do you love Israeli settlers more than Palestianians barely surviving on the land they want? If not, whose house are you going to deny them and call it love?

Metaphysics made policy aside, their positions on LGBT issues are all the most advanced in terms of social liberties. Their position is consistently, “whatever the community wants, with us, it gets.” That either of these men could convince the rest of Washington and the American public to march to that tune is highly unlikely.

RICHARDSON: Bill Richardson seemed as tired of the debate as I was of listening to it at that point. He was unenthusiastic, talked about legislation that he’d launched and seen fail, and sat on the fence about gay marriage in a big way.

Perhaps it was his reluctance to stand for a strong, federalized law ensuring civil unions, but somehow Richardson earned this panel’s Kiss of Death question. They asked him if he believed sexual orientation is a choice.

Or, in essence, “would you like to lose the vote of the gay community and their sympathizers, or most traditional religious groups?”

He at least took a stance - “It’s a choice” - which is not the one the gay community, who actually are gay, take. I suppose that’s better than others I’ve heard on this widely debated question that still has psychologists scratching their heads on some aspects, for instance “I know people who’ve chosen not to be gay” and “I think everyone’s at least a little gay.”

EDWARDS: Edwards showed why he’s always seemed a perpetual second-stringer to me. He’s reactionary and loves to divert. This is no knock to his expertise or anything, but it does not distinguish one was what many consider to be fit for a role of “First Citizen of the World”.

Rather than expand on his policy or how he’d get it enacted, Edwards talked about everybody but himself. He touched on his wife, Ann Coulter, “the Right”, Bush, and spun syrupy-sweet yarns to show that his heart runs raw. This is all very well and good for someone you want as your televangelist. As a President, anecdotes take a back seat to action.

Another defining Edwards moment was when he was asked about his statements that his wife, but not he, supported gay marriage, and that his lack of support came from “his faith.” He claimed that this was because he was “on a journey” with the issue, and I assume he meant in an internal sense, but it may’ve just meant from a red state to a blue state considering what he said last night.

Joe Solomone confronted him with his comments and asked, “Just what about your faith leads you to oppose gay marriage?”

Edwards responded that it had been “wrong” for him to say that; it was wrong to use faith to justify policy positions, there had been enough of that the last seven years. In fact, he supported gay marriage now! Praise Jesus!

Solomone’s answer to this would’ve been mine. “Considering you were ‘on a journey’ with this issue”, he asked, “where on that journey do you think you are now?” The end? Just stopping by, maybe?

OBAMA: Obama had a lot going for him in this debate. He went first, considering he responded positively to the invitation first. He has, as he said, made equal freedoms for all and speaking the truth even when especially difficult hallmarks of his career. And in what he said this night, he set himself apart from other candidates who support “civil unions”.

He summed up his position carefully, surely cautious about offending those who would feel their marriage’s “specialness” jeopardized by gay marriage. He said he wanted to “disentangle ‘marriage’ from the civil rights issue.” He intended to institute this federally - to make all marriage licensing a federal, civil union license.

This is a terrific notion. It allows religions to call the civil union that the state grants whatever they want - marriage, hand-fasting, what-have-you - and so lets churches stick to their faith. Gays can get married in churches that will marry them. They can call it marriage. They will have the same right to do so, and all the same legal rights as anyone else who calls themselves married, straight or gay.

It went over like a lead balloon. It’s tragic that the moderators and commentators didn’t see the potentials in this scheme of “marriage control”, that essentially liberates the term for private use while extending public rights to all.

Particularly considering that it was considered on parity with Hillary’s solution.

CLINTON: Clinton was a mass of excuses as to why things didn’t change during the 90s - “Republicans” - and why they won’t change quickly even today - “Republicans.” She explained that politics is a gradual process, and that it’s other people, not her, that are to blame for this. Once she’s in charge, there won’t be this problem, apparently.

Coverage of this debate have not distinguished her from Obama or Edwards, simply saying they were all against DOMA and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and in favor of anti-discrimination laws and civil unions. This is patently false. Saying Obama spoke in favor of the same concept of civil unions as Hillary is like saying Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in favor of Jim Crow laws.

Clinton advocated that civil unions and gay marriage be a state issue. She would make sure that civil unions be mandated as having full equivalence with marriage rights, but the rest is up to the states to decide. How is this different from Obama’s?

Well, it’s different in that since gay marriage became an issue, some twenty-eight states have been coerced by fringe political activists to write into their Constitution that marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman. How this is not being contested as a violation of both the 1st and 14th Amendments, I do not know - it is, in essence, writing a law saying that one group can exercise a certain kind of speech and another group cannot. Hillary’s plan will explicitly allow this to continue. Leaving it to the states is just what happened under the era of “separate but equal”.

And yet she got a standing ovation.