Karl Rove biographer: 'This is the end of the Bush presidency'

Karl Rove biographer: 'This is the end of the Bush presidency'

Wayne Slater, author of The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, joined CNN on Monday to deliver what was, in effect, a political obituary on both Rove and the Bush administration.

"He can be called ... someone who was extraordinarily successful in the politics of -- politics," said Slater. "He is brilliant as a political strategist, and yet at the end, we've seen this colossal failure by the Bush administration, this collapse, and he has to bear some responsibility for that as well."

Slater suggested that Rove was responsible, in particular, for the administration's failure on the issue of illegal immigration. "I blame in large part Karl Rove and his politics," he stated. "He approached the White House to win by division, to divide Republicans from Democrats, and, in some cases, various elements within the Republican Party against itself. ... That strategy works, and worked for a series of elections, so long as you only wanted to win by a vote or two. ... But what it leaves you is incapable of effectively governing."

"In the aftermath of 9/11," continued Slater, "Karl saw that the approach that would be most successful would be a very sharp and ruthless division of the electorate ... that effectively left the architecture of the architect's dream of an enduring majority really in doubt and, as we've seen, pretty much collapsing around him."

"This is the end of the Bush presidency," Slater concluded. "Absolutely."

The following video is from CNN's Your World Today, broadcast on August 13.