I mean, you gotta love this for the title alone.

Salon (watch short ad for day pass to read article)

Thirty years ago, political reporters hailed strategist Hamilton Jordan and pollster Pat Caddell as the creative visionaries responsible for the dizzying ascent of Jimmy Carter. After Ronald Reagan supplanted Carter in 1980, news magazines rhapsodized about campaign manager Jim Baker's sagacity and image-maker Mike Deaver's mastery of the metaphors of TV visuals. Lee Atwater, the architect of George Bush's 1988 victory, inspired a generation of Republican operatives with his amoral fixation on racially tinged hot-button issues. Bill Clinton employed a different Svengali in each campaign, embracing James Carville's quick-response war-room partisanship in 1992 and four years later Dick Morris' split-the-difference triangulation.

This brief tour of the modern political wing of the Mensa Society should invite skepticism about the Cult of Karl Rove -- the belief shared by reverent Republicans and downcast Democrats alike that the president's top political advisor is unequaled as Machiavelli with a BlackBerry. Read on...