For red-meat Republicans, he still seems to be seen as a technical guru on electioneering. To Democrats, he’s a demon. Possibly because he rarely appeared in public interviews, or because he’s part of an intensely secretive administration, we have only vague impressions of what the truth might be about Karl Rove. All we know for sure is that he’s a damn poor rapper.

Yesterday’s postmortem in the Post-Gazette on the Rove era is typical of the shallow tripe we’ve been fed by much of the press for years. “Rove’s political acumen was evident in PA,” is the title of the piece. The premise is that Rove focused feverishly on Pennsylvania, and figured out how to turn out the Republican base in PA like nobody ever had before in the 2004 election.

Of course, Bush didn’t carry PA in 2000 or 2004. In 2006, a wave of anti-Bush sentiment allowed four Democratic congressional challengers and one senatorial challenger to defeat incumbent Republicans. Whatever Rove has been peddling, Pennsylvania wasn’t buying it.

Rove’s touted strategy of narrowly holding power via an energized base is at odds with his other claimed interest in creating a permanent Republican majority. A base-only focus seems to be a strategy without contingency, otherwise known as a poor strategy. It is not unlike winning a decisive military battle with a post-war strategy of “we’ll be greeted in the streets with flowers, and oil revenue will pay for everything.”

On this point I will agree with ex-Bush speech writer David Frum in his NY Times editorial:

Building coalitions is essential to political success. But it is not the same thing as political success. The point of politics is to elect governments, and political organizations are ultimately judged by the quality of government they deliver.

Now that we can see his final portfolio, Rove looks to be, at best, a skilled tactician. As a strategist, he seems to have failed almost completely. And if election results in Pennsylvania are any evidence, his tactical dominance is probably overrated too. If Rove’s GOtV operation couldn’t beat the squads of rag-tag MoveOn volunteers, how good could he have been?