The Pundit Analyzing Obama? Some TV Upstart Named Rove

By JIM RUTENBERG and JACQUES STEINBERG
New York Times

WASHINGTON — Late Thursday night, Karl Rove, the architect of the last two Republican presidential victories, was on his new television perch at Fox News, offering free advice to Senator Barack Obama as he closed in on the Democratic nomination.

Any move by Mr. Obama to declare victory before the last of the Democratic primaries in June, Mr. Rove said, would alienate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s wing of the party. “That’s a mistake,” he said. “That just is rubbing the loser’s nose in it. And a lot of those supporters will remember it by November.”

In the Obama campaign war room in Chicago, where Mr. Rove’s talking head was just one of several across six television screens, his counsel was taken with a heavy dose of salt.

“Wouldn’t taking his advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?” said Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton.

The bête noire of the Democrats has turned pundit, and his old nemeses — along with those who used to cover him in the news media — do not always know what to make of it.

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