General Karl Rove, Reporting for Duty

Karl Rove spent last week where he usually does, out of the limelight. But that didn't stop Democrats from seeing Rove everywhere, his invisible hand guiding all that the White House has done to prepare the country for war. For months Democrats have suspected that Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, was manipulating the war on terror to Republicans' political advantage. In August, when Democratic operative Jim Jordan was asked how war might affect the November elections, he replied caustically, "You mean when General Rove calls in the air strikes in October?" And when majority leader Tom Daschle erupted on the Senate floor last week, accusing the Bush White House of politicizing the national-security debate, he fingered Rove as a principal culprit.

Over dinner in a Washington steak house, Rove laughed off suggestions that he had manufactured the Iraq debate to divert attention from the sagging economy. "It's ridiculous!" he told TIME. "That's not me, and you know it." But that's the thing about Rove; few people know exactly where or whether the perception of his clout diverges from reality. There is no doubt that Rove ranks among the most influential staff members ever to advise a President. He is so peripatetic, his political and policy interests so catholic, that it's tempting for Democrats and Republicans alike to assume there are no limits to Rove's power--even if there are.

It doesn't help that Rove has the habit of fueling speculation that the White House is wagging the dog. In January he suggested that the war on terror created a political advantage because Americans "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." In June a misplaced diskette containing one of Rove's private PowerPoint presentations included advice to candidates to "focus on the war" in their fall campaigns. When friends ask whether Bush really plans to invade Iraq, Rove has been known to reply, "Let me put it this way: If you want to see Baghdad, you'd better visit soon."

But the image of General Rove drawing up war plans exists mostly in the imagination of Democrats who fear and loathe the man. Insiders swear that Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell wouldn't stand for interference from a political operative. Superhawks Cheney and Rumsfeld didn't need Rove to tell them to target Saddam, and Powell has warned the White House that he doesn't expect to receive, and won't accept, phone calls from Rove. Then there's the President, who likes to keep his exuberant aide in check by tartly reminding him who's boss. Says Ed Gillespie, a G.O.P. strategist who worked with Rove on the Bush campaign: "If Karl said we should invade Iraq to help us in the November elections, he would have found himself sitting on his ass on Pennsylvania Avenue because the President would have thrown him out of the Oval Office."