By Patrick Crowley
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Rove

When it comes to politics, it doesn't get much bigger right now than Karl Rove.

Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, navigates the ever blurring line between politics and policy in Washington through crafting the Republicans' winning strategy in last year's Congressional elections, plotting decisions involving Iraq and al-Qaida, even positioning the president on an aircraft carrier for the ultimate photo op.

Late Thursday afternoon he was in Lexington, Ky., riding from the airport to a downtown political fund-raiser for Kentucky U.S. Jim Bunning, the Southgate Republican who has raised more than $1 million even without a 2004 opponent.

"It's good to be in Kentucky," Rove said into a cell phone.

"It sure is green here," he said.

"Jim Bunning is a great friend of the president. He is a strong voice for Kentucky ... and if I can be of any help then I'll be glad to do my part."

Rove works behind-the-scenes, fusing the bully pulpit of the presidency with hardball politics to move the Bush agenda forward.

A biography about Rove is titled Boy Genius.

And when he made a May 7 trip to New Hampshire to deliver a speech, it was covered extensively by, among others, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe.

Rove, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote, "is one powerful dude."

And he doesn't stray off message.

The president's recent Top Gun landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln as it sat just 30 miles from the California coast wasn't, as Democrats have charged, a staged political opportunity for Bush to build his approval ratings and stash away some television footage for 2004 campaign ads.

"The president was thanking the men and women of the Abraham Lincoln ... for participating in Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq," Rove said.

Bush's April 24 visit to Canton and Lima was not designed to pressure Ohio Sen. George Voinovich into backing the president's tax cut.

"We talked about that trip months and months ago," Rove said. "Ohio is an important, big state with a lot of jobs. They have a good story to tell in Ohio.

"We're disappointed (Voinovich) and the president don't see eye to eye on this," he said. "But he is a long-time friend of the president. They were governors together. I wish he was stronger for the president's (tax cut) package, but it's an honest disagreement."

"Al-Qaida represents a serious and continuing threat," Rove said. "But like the president said, we won the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq, but the war on terrorism goes on.

Rove called al-Qaida a "sophisticated, dangerous network that is spread all around the world in 67 or 68 countries."

And because terrorists are not aligned with a particular nation and are not defending a country full of people, capital and assets, "they are much more dangerous" than a conventional army, he said.

And finally Rove disputed that Bush has not yet started his re-election bid.

"There will be time for politics later," he said.

Rove would not say how much Bunning expected to raise at Thursday's event.

"Whatever it is," he said with a chuckle, "it won't be enough."

E-mail pcrowley@enquirer.com