Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | Who is Karl Rove? A great piece. This is a very enlightening quote:

"The aggressive tactics won the 22-year-old Rove a walk-on role in the Watergate saga that was consuming the nation. A report was published in the Washington Post on August 10, 1973, titled "[Republican party] Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks", gave an account, based on tape recordings, of how Rove and a colleague had been touring the country giving young Republicans political combat training, in which they recalled their feats of derring-do, such as Rove's Chicago heist at the Dixon headquarters.

At the time, Rove claimed the tape had been doctored to exclude a warning to the audience not to try to emulate any of his past misdeeds. Others present simply remember a caution not to get caught. The publicity forced the intervention of the Republican National Committee and its chairman, a former Texas congressman clinging on to his political career: George Herbert Walker Bush. After considering the case, Bush Sr took action. He drove Edgeworth out of the party on suspicion of having leaked the tapes, and hired Rove, bringing him to Washington."

Time and again you find stories of this flavour, where someone has done something manifestly wrong or against common sense or against the public interest and they are either befriended, rewarded or forgiven by the Bushes. And these people are setting up a presidential dynasty. Just watch Jeb Bush move in after Bush, should he get a second term. Just watch. And cry.