Elder Statesman of Sleaze

Karl Rove, who smeared John McCain out of the presidency eight years ago, finds his victim's use of those tactics now against Barack Obama a trifle too crude for his taste.

"McCain," Karl Rove said today on Fox News, "has...gone one step too far and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test."

Rove, in effect, is criticizing his own protégés in the McCain campaign, saying "there ought to be an adult who says, 'Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don't we make our point and won't we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don't include that one little last tweak in the ad?'"

Amid the talk about pigs and lipstick, Rove's remarks call to mind the old saying about thrift--using every porker part but the squeal. As a paid pundit for Fox, Rove has even found a way to profit from that.