Rove rage.

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie
• Position: Karl Rove

BOY GENIUS: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, Carl M. Cannon Public Affairs, $15.99

IF KARL ROVE WERE A STOCK, this might be a good time to short him. It's not that I think he's about to go on a losing streak. Hardly--he may have a great many victories in him yet. But when people are calling you "Boy Genius" and they're not being sarcastic--people, for example, like Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon in their new book Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush--you have to think that this may be just about as good as it gets.

First, there's the genius business. The authors make the case that Rove is a highly talented operative who pretty much does nothing but win. They present him single-minded and highly prepared, with a shrewd eye for political talent, and an admirably ruthless willingness to go for the jugular. They give us a good long look at his career, taking us on a fan's tour of a quarter-century of Texas state politics. Believe me, to love this book, you're going to have to be the kind of person who gets the vapors from reading sentences like, "With Rove handling his direct mail, Clements was in even better shape for his 1982 reelection bid against Mark White, the tall, drawling centrist attorney general who had replaced John Hill?" It's the kind of book that will have the same effect on Charlie Cook that Grateful Dead concerts have on Bill Walton.

But what's interesting about all these campaigns is to see just how seldom Rove-run operations make mistakes. It's always the other fellows who don't read the land right, or who make the faux pas, or who have some skeleton in their closets, or who don't realize they've lashed themselves to some position that's going to anchor them in the political deep. Look no further than the 2000 election: It was Gore, with all his assets, who couldn't get out of his own way. Bush simply kept putting his best foot forward, and in the end, that was enough to put him in the position where the Supreme Court could elect him president. Not fumbling and not committing penalties may not be enough to get a football coach declared a genius, but it will win him a lot of games.

What does get someone like Rove declared a genius is pulling off the upset. The managers of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy weren't thought of geniuses. Rove is acclaimed a genius by these writers and others...