Agreed. Rove is no genius. The only reason that Bush is still in the White House is that the SwiftBoat vets destroyed Kerry's credibility. Rove was not willing to get involved with that. In fact, Bush and Rove bent over backward to not draw attention to Kerry's numerous lies about his service in Vietnam.
And one of the reasons Bush won the first time was Katherine Harris bravely stood her ground on the law. Her treatment by the Bushes has plumbed new depths of ingratitude and disloyalty.
Course, another reason Bush won is that Gore and Lieberman proposed throwing out all those military absentee ballots on technicalities. Not even liberal Dems could stomach that and abandoned those two.