Wowing them at Aspen

Well maybe "they" weren't wowed, but they should have been, according to Clive Crook.  It was Karl Rove at the Aspen Ideas Festival that Crook was talking about, and as it happens, Rove got only polite applause for an effective presentation while former president Clinton got a standing ovation for showing up.

Rove is the archetypal eminence grise, the backroom planner, all tactics, poll findings, and sinister maneuverings, so it comes as a shock to hear him talk knowledgeably and with apparent conviction on policy. He had slides full of facts and numbers, not on trends in campaign demographics but on immigration, energy efficiency, greenhouse-gas emissions, and the like. He was engaging and very well prepared. He spoke like an unusually effective candidate for office, not a strategy nerd.