"A Passing Thing"

At 5:15 on election night, Karl Rove sounded jovial, assuring Sean Hannity's radio audience that Republicans would defy the polls and hang on to both the House and Senate. Less than three hours later, President George W. Bush was watching returns on TV in his private study with the First Lady and a few friends and aides. He leaned over as a blue riptide swamped Republican after Republican. "Looks like a rout!" he said.

The architect--as Bush famously called Rove--of the 2000, 2002 and 2004 G.O.P. wins now downplays his forecast. "My job is not to be a prognosticator," he told TIME in an interview in his West Wing office. "I told the President, 'I don't know where this is going to end up. But I see our way clear to Republican control.' My job is not to go out there and wring my hands and say, 'We're going to lose.'"

Rove chalks up the loss to corruption, incumbent overconfidence and conservative dissatisfaction with spending. He does not read the outcome as exclusively a judgment on either Iraq or Bush. "Iraq mattered," Rove says. "But it was more frustration than it was an explicit call for withdrawal." Which is not to say the White House didn't see trouble coming. To keep the Republican National Committee from having to take out a loan, according to Republican officials, Bush chipped in $12 million of his campaign funds that otherwise would have gone to his presidential library. Looking ahead, friends say Rove has already identified four voter groups to watch in 2008: Catholics, Hispanics, suburban moderates and people with less than a college education. All four groups swung away from Republicans in this election.

Rove has not given up on his dream of a durable Republican majority, calling last week's loss a "transient, passing thing."

"The Republican Party remains at its core a small-government, low-tax, limit-spending, traditional-values, strong-defense party," he says. "I see the power of the ideas, even in a tough year." Friends say Rove plans to lie low in the '08 race until a nominee is clear. Then, whether in or out of government, he will be the connection between the White House and the campaign, refereeing the candidate's needs and Bush's own.