As much as I’m enjoying the Karl Rove saga, I can’t help but think it’s going to all come to naught. Bush’s loyalty combined with the public’s apathy (I really can’t believe the Dems can whip the avreage voter into a frenzy over a question of sourcing and confidentiality — even the question of a covert agent’s identity is confusing to many) means the ball will not be moved more than an inch on this one. And even if he leaves the White House he will just be running things from a undisclosed secure location, one that shares a cafeteria with Cheney’s.

But with Matthew Cooper’s version of events being published in Time today we get a rare glimpse of Rove’s working style. Having dished the dirt on Wilson’s wife, even if he wasn’t playing the Plame game, Rove feigned a moment of conscience. “I’ve already said too much,” he told the reporter, having just revealed that Ms. Wilson was a CIA operative. This is pure Mata Hari stuff: think of the woman in Help! who keeps telling Paul “I can say no more” about the plan of the Kali clan to sacrifice Ringo. Or Dianne Wiest in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, forever putting one gloved finger over John Cusack’s lips and admonishing him: “Don’t speak.” Who knew Karl had such a flair for melodrama? “The memory of that line has stayed with me a couple of years now,” Cooper told CNN’s Howard Kurtz yesterday.

In other movie references, Cooper revealed that the “double super secret background” line he used in an email to describe the status under which Rove spoke was inspired by Animal House, in which Delta House was put on “double secret probation.” Perhaps the NY Times’s Judith Miller, who has gone to prison to protect the identity of the person who may or may not have told her Wilson’s wife was a spook, will get to yell “Food fight!” in the cafeteria.