A roving he'll go

Depending on your political persuasion, Karl Rove is either a clever, bare-knuckles brawler who has mastered the arena of American politics, or a dirty dealing smear-meister who's plumbed new depths in negative politics. Either way, revelations that Rove was the White House source who "outed" CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003 in order to punish her husband have put George W Bush's closest advisor in the hottest water of his political career.

Rove was born in Denver, Colorado, on Christmas Day 1950. He spent his formative years in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he became known for carrying around a briefcase filled with information that helped him become one of the state's top debaters. Like vice president Dick Cheney and top Bush administration hawks Paul Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, Rove got a draft deferment during the Vietnam War by enrolling in college.

During the late 1960s, America's college campuses seethed with anti-establishment protests and lofty talk of "revolution" by liberal and left-wing idealists. But safely ensconced at the conservative University of Utah, Rove was convinced that history's pendulum would soon swing back towards the right, allowing conservative Republicans to sweep aside liberals and regain the political high ground. To do his bit, he joined the College Republicans, a national network of students advocating the Republican Party line on campuses.

As part of his duties he was sent to Illinois to work on the successful Senate bid of Ralph Smith. During the campaign, Rove stole stationery from the Democratic party in order to send out fake party invitations promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" at a fictitious bash timed to coincide with the opening of the Democrats' campaign headquarters. And by dropping off the phony invites at rock concerts, soup kitchens, hippie communes, Rove ensured that the gala opening became a circus, swamped with as many uninvited party crashers as invited guests.

In 1973, Rove was elected as the College Republicans' national chairman (ironically quitting college to take the post), after a controversial campaign that saw his opponent accuse him of using dirty tactics to win. So serious was the row that George Bush Snr – who was then chairman of the Republican National Committee – was asked to investigate.

During Bush's probe, one of Rove's opponents leaked to the Washington Post an audio tape of Rove and another College Republican bragging about their covert escapades, like the Illinois affair, to young prospective Republican recruits. The result was a Post feature story entitled "GOP Probes Official As Teacher of Tricks" that gave the then 23-year-old Rove his first, albeit unflattering, national profile.

Bad press aside, Bush apparently liked what he saw. Not only did he exonerate Rove – despite ample evidence implicating him in foul play – but, within weeks, Bush gave him a job at the RNC (Republican National Committee). During the summer of '73 Rove was also invited to stay at the Bush compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, during which time he first met George "Dubya" – a man he later gushingly described as "exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have".

Now safely under the well-connected wings of the Bush clan, Rove logged a short stint to Virginia – where he excelled at direct-mail fund-raising – before relocating to Texas in 1977, where he spent the next three decades honing his skill as a down-and-dirty tactician with a keen eye for choosing electable Republicans.

Initially, the Midas-touch that would eventually develop eluded Rove, as he served as an advisor to George W Bush's first failed bid to win a congressional seat in Texas in 1978. However, Bill Clements, another candidate Rove worked for that year, succeeded in becoming the first Republican governor of Texas in 104 years. Clements rewarded Rove by making him his chief of staff.

But in 1982, Rove's grand plan suffered a major blow when every Republican seeking statewide office – including Governor Clements – was defeated. So he went back to the drawing-board, repackaging "the message" in order to win votes in Texas' expanding suburbs by pressing the right buttons on education, taxes, and "compassionate conservatism."

In 1986, Rove's strategy bore fruit when Clements re-took the governor's mansion. At the same time, Rove began a campaign to win Republican control of the traditionally Democratic-controlled Texas Supreme Court. By 1988, he'd succeeded in getting a Republican elected as Chief Justice, and Republicans into six of the court's nine judgeships.

Rove also began to pressure George W Bush to run for governor of Texas, but Dubya resisted, apparently content with his lucrative job as part-time owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Much to Rove's dismay, Democrat Anne Richards then won the governorship in 1990. So he began working on Dubya again, eventually convincing Bush the Younger to cast his hat into the ring in 1994.

Given Bush's lightweight track record, Richards' people weren't overly worried about the challenger at first, a smugness they soon came to regret. Rove pulled out all the stops. In the closing days of the tight race, he had "pollsters" phone potential voters to ask provocative questions such as "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if you knew her staff is dominated by lesbians?" The strategy, known as "push polling", helped Bush pull off a surprise victory, and confirmed to Rove the value of the unsavoury tactic in future electoral dogfights.

Bush won re-election in 1998, and Rove began pushing him to make a run for the Oval Office. Thanks in part to Bush Snr's connections, and new alliances forged by Rove, Dubya amassed a huge campaign war-chest, money placed on the early front runner during the 2000 Republican primary season. But Arizona Senator John McCain was a surprisingly strong challenger, whose appeal amongst independents as well as moderate Republicans helped him trounce Bush in the season's first primary in New Hampshire.

Rove responded by targeting a vicious whispering campaign at McCain during the South Carolina primary. Insinuations are made about McCain's alleged mental instability and his wife's dependency on prescription drugs. Fliers were distributed outside churches calling McCain "the fag candidate" And Rove again unleashed the "push pollsters" who began calling people asking "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" (the McCains had adopted their Bangladeshi daughter Bridget from Mother Theresa's orphanage).

The dirty tricks worked perfectly. And after Bush won the South Carolina primary there was virtually nothing but a few thousand famous hanging-chads in Florida between him and the White House. And when Bush moved into the Oval Office in January 2001, Rove was right by his side as a senior political advisor.

When the 9/11 attacks occurred, Rove's influence waned initially as military hawks like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his side-kicks Wolfowitz and Feith gained more access to Bush. But from the 2002 mid-term elections onward, Rove was back in command. From his White House office he micro-managed Republican congressional efforts nationwide, personally hand-picking many of the candidates in both national and state elections.

Rove was deemed so effective that when Bush won re-election he singled out Rove for praise, dubbing him simply "the Architect". (In private, Bush also affectionately calls Rove a "Turd Blossom" – a reference to a Texas wildflower that thrives in manure). In February, Bush made Rove his deputy chief of staff, which means that Turd Blossom now officially coordinates the policies of the National Economic Council, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council, and the Domestic Policy Council.

So seemingly omnipotent is Rove in guiding White House policies, that some Democrats sometimes substitute his name for Bush's, leading to sardonic comments like "Is Rove contemplating attacking Syria?" But the fact that Rove is just as vulnerable as anyone to the fickle winds of fate and brutal machinations of Washington belt-way politics has been dramatically underscored by the Valerie Plame affair.

Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador to Iraq. In early 2002, as the White House sought to build a case for invading Iraq, he was dispatched to Niger to probe "reports" that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium there. He reported back to the White House that Hussein wasn't – information that was ignored as the administration continued to peddle the myth that he was.

But after the 2003 invasion was complete, and no WMDs were found, Wilson went public with his story. The White House was furious, and lo-and-behold, in July 2003 arch-conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak wrote a column which mentioned in passing that Plame was a CIA operative. The leak was intended to punish Wilson for embarrassing Bush – but it also violated a 1982 federal law against naming covert personnel, and potentially endangered Plame's life.

When the scandal first broke, and an FBI probe was initiated, Bush vowed to fire the source of the leak. But now that his closest and most long term advisor had been identified as the villain, he has waffled.

As yet, there's no evidence indicating that Bush knew of, or approved, Rove's actions. But as the plot thickens, and Democrats demand that he honour his pledge to axe the culprit, more and more pundits are wondering if Karl Rove can survive the gathering storm – or whether Turd Blossom's career will finally be brought down by the stench of the stuff on which he has built it. p