The Gab Fest on The Boy Genius.

This is the Slate Daily podcast for Friday, August 17th.

I'm June Thomas.

This week, the August Gabfest crew is joined by CBS News senior political correspondent

Jeff Greenfield for a conversation ranging from

Carl Rose's departure from the White House, the latest in the presidential races, and some

crazy quirks of the electoral calendar. Here it is. Hello and welcome to the Slate Political

Gab Fest. I'm June Thomas with our August team of Jacob Weisberg's late editor-in-chief.

Hi, June. Yes, we're the boys of summer. And we have a really special guest today.

Jeff Greenfield, senior political correspondent for CBS News, has come across town to join us in the

Newsweek building, and we're very grateful. Thank you very much. In the old days of TV, you knew it was summer when Mike Stokey's pantomime quiz, a charade show, came on to replace some big network show. He went on forever, but only in the summer. And I like to think of myself, Stokey of the Slate Audio Department. I'm deeply honored. I would love to do a charade show. show. Unfortunately, Jeff, our readers are all under 50, so that reference may be lost.

That's why I tried to put an answer to explain it.

Let's start with our first topic, which is the departure of Carl Rove.

He broke the news of his departure from the White House in an interview with the Wall Street Journal editorial

page editor, Paul Giego. He's going to spend time with his family. What do we make of this

news? What's Carl Rove's legacy? Jeff, I looked at Jake, but I'm going to ask you.

I talked to a few Republicans, a couple of whom were less than kind because Carl has been in a lot of

close combat over decades, as much with fellow Republicans as the Democrats. One common theme,

which I've seen, and I think there's something to this, is that one of the lessons is that maybe

what makes for an effective political tactician doesn't necessarily

make for a good policy advocate, that when he was given that twin job at the White House,

basically running the politics and an effect driving the policy, his policies, which were

...