IF THE mark of a successful political Svengali is his ability to stay in the shadows, then Karl Rove is not doing a very good job. The latest blaze of publicity was ignited by a computer disc that a hapless White House intern dropped in the street. (What is it with these interns?) The disc contained Mr Rove's masterplan for the mid-term elections, including an embarrassing observation that the president's brother, Jeb Bush, is vulnerable in Florida. Past blazes of publicity have been ignited by Mr Rove's business dealings with Enron and his penchant for telling his Republican minions to “run on the war”.

Such spells in the limelight are hard to avoid when you wield as much power as George Bush's senior adviser for strategic initiatives. Mr Rove is at the very heart of the Bush machine: de facto head of the Republican National Committee, vetter-in-chief of Republican candidates, linkman between the White House and the conservative movement, and a one-man ideas factory. His fingerprints can be found on all Mr Bush's most controversial decisions, from stem-cell research to steel tariffs.

Mr Rove has been close to Mr Bush since at least 1977, when he moved to Texas to work for George Bush senior. He helped to create Texas's modern Republican Party, running Mr Bush's two successful campaigns for the governorship. Having helped sell the young governor to Republican elders, he then masterminded the 2000 campaign. Mr Bush thinks so much of the 51-year-old schemer that he has bestowed on him not one but two nicknames: “Boy Genius” and “Turdblossom”.

Most political consultants regard getting their man into the White House as reward enough in itself. Lee Atwater contented himself with running the Republican National Committee, James Carville proclaimed himself too much of a hired gun to work as a public servant. Yet Mr Rove installed himself at the heart of the White House. Now his influence is set to grow further. Karen Hughes, Mr Bush's other ear-bender, is retiring, just as the White House is starting to focus on Mr Rove's home territory—the November elections and the 2004 presidential contest.

The fashionable worry about Mr Rove's increasing power is that he is pushing his boss too far to the right. It was Mr Rove who persuaded Mr Bush to put strict limits on stem-cell research (against Mrs Hughes's advice). It is Mr Rove who is arguing most fiercely against the inheritance tax that conservatives loathe.

The real problem with Mr Rove is his growing belief that politics is about bribing specific pressure groups

Yet the Boy Genius is far from being a prisoner of the right. He infuriated America-firsters by proposing a giant amnesty for illegal Mexican immigrants. He infuriated the Wall Street Journal by supporting steel tariffs. He infuriated almost everyone in the conservative movement by supporting moderates in the Republican primaries this year—most notably Richard Riordan, making a doomed attempt to run for governor of California.

The real problem with Mr Rove is his growing belief that politics is about bribing specific pressure groups, such as steel workers in important Rustbelt states, rather than pursuing the national interest. This makes a public mockery of Mr Bush's (admittedly always fanciful) claim to be a new sort of politician, who does not abide by Washington deal-doing. Nothing could be more Washingtonian, or downright Clintonian, than calculating the electoral advantage to be squeezed from every action.

What would Mark Hanna have said?

Yet it also represents a much more significant volte-face: a betrayal of Mr Rove's plan to transform his party. Two years ago, Mr Rove, a history buff who brought 148 boxes of books to Washington with him, frequently spoke about his admiration for William McKinley. McKinley's election victory in 1896 ended a long period of deadlocked politics, ushering in an era of Republican dominance. For this, McKinley had to thank his own Turdblossom, a political seer called Mark Hanna who masterminded the reorientation of the party, bringing into its fold the rising industrial elite and the new urban political machines.

Mr Rove made a good start at revamping the Republican Party. One in three Latinos voted for Mr Bush. The recruitment of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to high-profile jobs demonstrated that there is more to Republicanism than angry white males. A mammoth education-reform bill showed that the party was serious about public education.

Yet the current round of pandering could destroy any lingering hope of a McKinley-style transformation. You cannot inaugurate a new era of Republican dominance by trashing a principle, such as free trade. You cannot break the mould of politics by kowtowing to vested interests. Vested interests only grow hungrier with the gorging: the textile industry is now demanding the same privileges as steel.

Mr Rove's defenders say that he is dealing with a political stalemate. The Florida recount profoundly shocked a party that had been confident of a clear victory. The loss of control of the Senate destroyed remaining dreams of a new Republican majority. Isn't Mr Rove just being prudent to assume that the next presidential election could be as tight as the previous one?

Yet the best way to ensure a tight election is to govern as if you expect one. Mr Bush's first year was successful precisely because he governed as if he had won by a landslide. The steel decision was calamitous, politically as well as economically, because it projected an image of weakness, indeed cravenness, at a time when Mr Bush enjoyed astronomical approval ratings.

A darker interpretation is that Mr Rove's pandering is the easy option: it gives him room to dispense favours for clients and perform electoral conjuring tricks for his boss. The longer he remains in Washington, the less he talks about a rebirth of Republicanism and the more he indulges in Beltway power-games. Mr Rove's problem is not that he is too ambitious, as his enemies claim. It is that he has allowed his Texas-sized ambition to shrink to the proportions of a small town on the Potomac.