Put an Asterisk Next to Rove’s Name

To many, he was “Bush’s Brain,” the master tactician who would stop at nothing to advance the political agenda of George W. Bush.

But to a growing number of experts within the Beltway and beyond, a more sinister portrait of former White House political adviser Karl Rove is emerging: a man who achieved his record-shattering results only by using steroids.

“The question isn’t whether or not Karl Rove was juicing,” says Davis Logsdon, a University of Minnesota professor who studies steroid use among White House political advisers. “The question is, exactly how much was he juicing?”

In building his case that Mr. Rove used performance-enhancing drugs during his years in the Bush White House, Mr. Logsdon compares his record in Texas, where he was an above-average political adviser, to his tenure in Washington, where he became a pumped-up superstar.

“In Texas, Rove only succeeded in getting a governor elected, but in Washington, he organized the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, staged the ‘Mission Accomplished’ photo op, and outed a CIA agent,” Mr. Logsdon says. “There’s only one way to explain the surge in performance: steroids.”

And Mr. Logsdon suspects that steroids may have also played a role in the 2000 presidential election, in which Mr. Rove engineered a victory for Mr. Bush even though Bush received fewer votes than former Vice President Al Gore.

“If Rove was using steroids during all that, then the 2000 election has to go down in the record books with an asterisk,” he says.

Elsewhere, bowing to safety concerns, a Chinese manufacturer recalled 14 million “Poison Me Elmo” toys.

Award-winning humorist, television personality and film actor Andy Borowitz is author of “The Republican Playbook.”

© 2007 Creators Syndicate