The Card table

Raising the profile, isn't in Andy Card's best interest.

For Mr. Card, who has never claimed to be an assertive power broker, the criticism of his management style cuts at the very skills he prides himself in. Although he briefly served as transportation secretary under the first President Bush, most of his career in public service has been in the anonymous, but important, ranks of bureaucracy. He came into the Bush presidential campaign not as a political adviser but as the nuts-and-bolts manager of the Republican convention. Even now, five years at the side of the most powerful leader in the world, he describes his job like a good bureaucrat.

"I do not see my job as being anything other than a staffer responsible for the staff," Mr. Card said in an interview earlier this year.

Technically, Mr. Card is Mr. Rove's superior - and he is, according to people inside and outside the White House, sometimes privately at odds with Mr. Rove, his deputy chief of staff, who he believes can be overly political and disrespectful of proper White House boundaries.

I wasn't sure how to take the Times story. Is it serious? Apparently not.

If Mr. Card has had a heart-to-heart with Mr. Rove about the swirling criminal investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative's name, it has not been publicly disclosed.

"You're not going to get Andy to tell you he took Karl to the woodshed," a senior Republican official said.

Several administration officials said Mr. Card would be furious with any White House official who leaked information to the press. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak by the White House.

I'm glad they made that clear.

As noted on the Whiskey Bar.

Card's long stint as the Shrub's master of ceremonies hasn't exactly raised his profile. In the only Bush II kiss-and-tell memoir to date (Ron Suskind's as-told-to account of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's stormy tenure, The Price of Loyalty) Card is mentioned frequently, but usually only in passing. He's in all the meetings, but rarely says anything worth repeating. The most revealing passage in the book shows Shrub treating him like a waiter -- and a rathery [sic] dim-witted one at that:

"Go get me Andy Card," Bush said to one of the Secret Service agents. Card, the designee as chief of staff, entered from an adjoining room . . . Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. "You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?"

Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.

A dumb president, advised by a dumb waiter.