ROSE: You're here on the same day that Karl Rove resigns. Tell me what your impression of Karl Rove is as a political tactician, as a policymaker, as a political philosopher.


MOULITSAS: As a policymaker, there really isn't very much good I can possibly say about Karl Rove I think his legacy going to be Iraq, it's going to be Katrina, it's going to be crumbling infrastructure, bridges collapsing in Minneapolis. So from a policy standpoint, from a direction he's pushed George Bush and this Republican administration really has been an abject disaster for this country. As a tactician, it's mixed reviews. He did win the White House for bush in 2002 and 2004. He did....

ROSE: I want to talk more about you but crumbling infrastructure could be held... A lot of people you could hold responsible for that, probably not Karl Rove.

MOULITSAS: Well, he's somebody who was a chief driver of George Bush's tax cuts. And if you don't invest in this country, of course you're going to have crumbling infrastructure. You don't have money to pay for the nation's priorities, you're going to have massive deficits, massive debt and bridges collapses in places like Minneapolis.

ROSE: So the bridge would have failed if we had not been engaged in the war and didn't have the massive deficit? They would have rebuilt it and done these other things?

MOULITSAS: You invest the money in our nation's infrastructure, then you'll have a situation where these sort of incidents are going to happen less. Look at Katrina, the levies were supposed to be funded at a certain level and the Bush administration didn't fund the army corps of engineers to the level they had had requested to fix the levees and make sure they could withstand a Katrina hurricane.

ROSE: Are you convinced for sake of this conversation that the Clinton administration would have done that?

MOULITSAS: Absolutely.

It turns out that the Bush administration and Congress increased federal highway aid to Minnesota by 46% in 2005, for the four-year period through 2009