Fun with October surprises!

It's amazing how Karl Rove can promise a new, double-super-secret October surprise, and a world full of chumps 'ooh' and 'ah' as if everything he's touched since the 2004 elections hasn't gone to crap.

Rove's reputation as a genius is now indelible -- he could design the Maginot line, drive up to it in his Edsal and announce that he was throwing the full weight of the White House behind New Coke, and people would still say he has magic in those chubby hands.

Actually, what Rove's got is a president with a 30-something approval rating and a front row seat from which he can watch all these GOP Reps run away from his boy in a mad, screaming panic. Make no mistake: keeping a few of them in the fold is what that leaked October surprise story -- and the huge ad buys that the RNC is saying it will come through with -- is all about.

But let's play along because October surprise season is always a time for some good, clean, old-fashioned fun.