If you really want to diminish a candidate, depict him as the foil of his handler. This is as old in American politics as politics itself.

Guy got in a gyrocopter in Gettysburg, flew under the radar all the way to Washington and came - What if he had had rather than petitions to Congress had had a bomb?

But, look, Washington is a town that creates myths for its own existence and its own amusement, and I was a subject of myth, sort of like Grendel in Beowulf - you know, not seen very often but often talked about.

I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes.

Our health-care issues is another big structural drag. All of these need to be dealt with if we're going to keep the American economy the most dynamic and flexible in the world.

In America we believe there ought to be limits on government.

If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.