With Wisconsin governor Scott Walker retiring from the Presidential race after blowing through his big pile of donations, from the NYT Magazine:

What Scott Walker Could Have Learned From George W. Bush

By ROBERT DRAPER SEPT. 22, 2015

… Bush’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, had been quietly arranging meetings between the Texas governor and foreign-policy experts fully two years before the general election. By the time Bush announced his exploratory committee in March 1999, the eventual Bush White House chief of staff Josh Bolten had already begun to assemble what would be a vast policy shop of issue advisers who met with the candidate regularly. …

The chief rap on Walker among his fellow Wisconsin Republicans was that his kitchen cabinet was not exactly a dream team, particularly when it came to national politics. Walker, they argued, lacked a Karl Rove mostly because he believed he was his own Rove. In apparently relying on his own political wisdom for longer than he should have, Walker proved the axiom sometimes attributed to the greatest of all Republicans, Abraham Lincoln: “He who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the magazine. His book about race and murder in Washington will be published in 2016.

Okay, maybe George W. Bush’s foreign (Invade the World) and domestic (Invite the World) policies weren’t so smart, but at least they were expensive. Reporters’ rolodexes are full of the phone numbers of guys who fondly remember getting a sweet little taste of that action.

[Comment at Unz.com.]