Exit strategist.(POLITICS)(Karl Rove)

NO presidential aide in the modern era has had as wide-ranging a portfolio as Karl Rove. He was the president's top political adviser, as well as his top domestic policymaker. Some of the opprobrium he has received from the Left is the result of just this combination: Imagine what conservatives would have said if James Carville had moved into the Clinton White House in 1993 and run a lot of the show.

When Bush took office, conservatives were not sure what to think of Rove. More often than not, however, conservatives have ended up allied with Rove in intra-Republican debates. The leading Republican strategists of the 1990s accepted a liberal hegemony and moved cautiously within it. (Witness the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, in which Republican candidates acted as though gun owners and religious conservatives were liabilities.) Rove did not shy from a fight, and started a few.

Rove's critics call his boldness divisive. In particular, he is said to have politicized national security. The truth is that national security is the subject of important differences between the parties and that the parties have every right to appeal to the public to settle them. It is no more divisive for Republicans to run on homeland security than for Democrats to run against Abu Ghraib. Rove was no more divisive in 2002 and 2004 than Democrats were in 2006; he just won the first two times, which was his real offense.

Obviously, Rove did not achieve his stated desire to bring about a ...