HAD ROVE NOT EXISTED W WOULD HAVE HAD TO INVENT HIM (via Tom Morin):

The President's brain (Mark Steyn, 24/10/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Profile: Karl Rove

A month ago, the standard complaint from Democrats went something like this: Bush has only one adviser but he's an evil genius; Kerry has thousands of advisers and, whether any of them are evil, none is a genius.

Their envy was directed at Karl Rove, the President's longtime adviser or (to quote the title of a biography of him) "Bush's Brain". The slightest misstep by Senator Kerry and the more paranoid Democratic websites are quick to detect the fingerprints of Rove - even though, like most evil geniuses, he doesn't leave any.

Meanwhile, over on the Right, they're happy to feed the Left's paranoia and gleefully credit every disaster on the Kerry side to another cunning move by Rove. Within an hour of The Guardian publishing its pro-Kerry letter from Lady Antonia Fraser to the swing voters of Clark County, Ohio, I received an e-mail from an American howling with laughter and insisting that this "Lady Antonia" figure was an obvious Karl Rove plant.

But so advanced is the Left's fevered obsession with Rove that it's increasingly difficult to parody. Every presidency has a sinister power behind the throne, and the fact that in this case the guy on the throne is the world's biggest moron naturally enhances the prestige of the power behind it. Indeed, the more furiously the Left maintains that Bush is a dummy the more extravagantly they talk up his shadowy Machiavel.

What folks tend to ignore is that W was tutored by Lee Atwater and hired Karl Rove.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 31, 2004 9:34 AM