Denouement

Well, if this Rove thing is indeed the Beginning of the End (actually, the Bush Social Security Debacle was the Beginning of the Beginning of the End, but we digress), the Confidence Man fully expects the remainder of Bush's term to look like the last 20 minutes of GOODFELLAS: as the Lufthansa Heist that is the Bush Administration finally corrupts every member of the team who participated in it, and our Principals become ever more paranoid and coke-addled, we start seeing the bit players (Ralph Reed, Duke Cunningham, Tom De Lay) show up in Dumpsters and refrigerated trucks.

The parallel actually works pretty well: Bush, the ne'er-do-well scion who mucked with the drugs against the advice of his various father figures, is Ray Liotta; Rove, the impetuous, hotheaded ultimate dirty trickster who ultimately becomes too volatile even for his friends' naked lust for power and gets offed just before being "made," is Joe Pesci; and Dick Cheney, the older outsider who never quite fit in by dint of birth, class, and paternity, is Bobby De Niro.