I usually don't pay much attention to columnist E.J. Dionne Jr

but today he sums up the "Rove Era" pretty succinctly.
In particular this passage is highly instructive:
But a "51 percent strategy" leaves no room for error, and Bush proved very error-prone. Relentlessly attacking Democrats on national security meant that Bush's opponents had no stake in his Iraq policy when things started falling apart.
Indeed this could well serve as an epitaph for the whole Bush Regime.

Where I differ with Mr. Dionne is in his naive' punidt driven faith that after 9-11 Bush could've built up a broad centrist driven GOP coalition a'la that Saint of the Potomac, the Moderate Messiah Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Yeah...Bush could've governed from the center, but his record and his nature proclaim GWB as a almighty fear-monger and a divider of electorates par excellence.
Hell his father was the same way...forget all that nostalgic nonsense emitted by David Broder, George Bush a selfish divisive old prick who got elected because of Willy Horton and tried to stay in office on the basis of Gennifer Flowers and a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton.
The Bush's aren't nice people, they are mean, selfish with a bitter and frightening sense of greivance against the whole world for such a wealthy family.
Frankly, Karl Rove fit right in.
Well at least we are at last quits with Karl, there are rumors out there that he is gonna sign up with the Romney campaign...lets see how well that works out.