On August 31, one of the most controversial relationships in politics comes to an end when Karl Rove resigns as political advisor to President George W Bush.
The two came together when Bush ran for Governor of Texas in 1992; since the pair succeeded in that bid, Rove has overseen Bush's two presidential campaigns, master-minded from behind the scenes the Republican surge of 2004, watched the `perpetual majority' the Republicans boasted of dissipate in just two short years, and come August will have completed 79 months in the White House serving a president who could not do without his political sagacity, but also couldn't refrain from referring to him, insultingly, as `turd blossom'.
Scandals have been swirling around Bush's political hatchet man in increasing numbers: he is under fire for attempting to use the Republican Party's email servers to conduct official business below the radar of Congressional oversight; he is accused of having a direct role in getting seven Attorney Generals fired because they wouldn't toe the party line; he has not yet been fully cleared of complicity in leaking the role of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
But Rove, in an extensive conversation with the Wall Street Journal, says his decision to quit now had nothing to do with the laundry list of scandals.
Speaking to Paul Gigot of the WSJ, Rove says he was thinking of quitting a little over a year ago - but the Republicans had lost their majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and he didn't want to go out on that low; then came setbacks in Iraq and elsewhere.
The trigger for the announcement now, Rove tells the WSJ, is that the White House chief of staff Josh Bolten recently decreed that anyone who stayed beyond a certain point would not be allowed to leave till January 20, 2009, when Bush will leave the White House.
The last two years have seen Rove's stock dip alarmingly. He was riding high in 2004, when Bush won re-election and, for only the second time in American political history, the party gained seats in both Houses of Congress - all this, while most of America was in a ferment about the war in Iraq.
Two years later, the Republicans had lost both Houses - and the party has tended to blame the Bush-Rove combine for the defeat, while apologists for the latter tend to point out that it was the bad behavior of the GOP Congressmen and Senators, their arrogance and `sense of entitlement', that caused the backlash among the voters.
Whatever - Rove says he is confident he is not leaving his President to face flak alone; in fact, Rove believes things are going to get better for Bush. His poll ratings, currently below the 30 per cent mark, will go back up, Rove says; the military surge in Iraq will begin to take effect; and the possible nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate will be a wake-up call for America to rally to the Republican cause.
Rove and wife Darby will watch his hopeful scenario unfold from their home in Ingram, near San Antonio, where his son attends college.
Photograph: Win McNamee/AFP/Getty Images
