At the end of the month, Karl Rove will pack up the family pictures and mementos that have decorated his White House office for the past 6 1/2 years and head back to Texas. He's calling it a career. We have the names of a few reliable movers we'd like to give him. They'll make sure he's out of town by the 31st.

http://www.nj.com/starledger/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-1/118706796115800.xml&coll=1

That's not the attitude that most Republicans have about Rove. To them, he remains the political Merlin who got George W. Bush into the Texas governor's mansion and then the White House. In the process, he forged a new Republican majority and held it together for six challenging years.

His GOP admirers even defend his failure last November when Democrats ended his three-election winning streak. It wasn't a case of a misplaced magic wand. Rove -- just like his close friend the president -- figures it wasn't his fault. Rather it was the quality of the candidates. Nice guy, that Rove.

Others -- and count us among them -- have a different take on Rove. He was a political Svengali who twice deceived the nation into believing Bush belonged in the White House.

In 2000, Bush was a "compassionate conservative" who would be a uniter, not a divider. The pitch worked, although barely. In the 2004 re-election campaign, Bush was the wartime president whom the coun try needed. He was the one who knew what to do about Iraq, terrorists and even the same-sex marriage movement.

Without a doubt, Rove pursued winning elections with a single-minded determination. No scare tactic was too outrageous, no matter how ridiculous. Demonizing opponents was his most effective campaign tool.

After 9/11, Rove exploited the public's fear of another at tack for political gain, portray ing Democrats, even military heroes, as getting weak in the knees when confronting terrorists. Ask former Sen. Max Cle land from Georgia or Sen. John Kerry about that.

In the past few years, Rove's image has been muddied a bit by his connection to two investigations: the probe into who leaked a CIA operative's name, and the role White House politics played in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

For Rove, and for the Bush administration as a consequence, there was no distinc tion between politics and policy. Science? It had to be politically correct. Ditto prosecutors.

Rove leaves Washington a much more acrimonious place than when he arrived in January 2001. Winning elections and retaining power have always been Washington priorities. Rove made them the only priorities, and in the process he did the seemingly impossible -- he poisoned the public's perceptions of government and politicians even more.

As he prepares to leave, we have one parting request for Rove: Could you make room in that moving van for Vice President Dick Cheney's things?