When everything breaks the right way for a smart political operative, the whole world bows low and celebrates his brilliance.

In Karl Rove's case, the hosannas of a few years past may have been even more fulsome than usual because so many of those singing his praises as a strategist couldn't believe that his boss, George W. Bush, might have had anything to do with the results.

Bush was, they always believed, an impostor and a dolt. Clearly his top political adviser, close confidant and most influential aide must be pulling the strings.

Either that, or the man behind the curtain was almost certainly Dick Cheney.

Even the president encouraged the myth that Rove possessed nearly infallible political instincts by giving him the nicknames "The Architect" and "Boy Genius."

To be sure, Rove did help engineer victories for Bush and the Republicans in 2000, 2002 and 2004. But his magic deserted him in 2006 when he predicted a GOP victory right up until the Democrats gained control of Congress.

Inside the White House, meanwhile, Rove's ability to help Bush frame issues was equally mixed: sometimes successful, as on tax reform in the early going, but other times hopelessly off pitch, as on such issues as Social Security and immigration.

It turned out, in other words, that Rove was as fallible as every other influential political operative before him who for a time seemed to walk on water, too.

More to the point, perhaps, Rove was not the ultimate decision maker. The buck didn't stop at his desk. The history of the American presidency demonstrates that no one is indispensable so long as the president himself knows his own mind.

On most key issues, for better or worse, this president isn't faking it. He does know what he thinks. Which is why when historians write the history of this administration, its triumphs and failures will be laid at the president's feet and not those of The Architect, who after many years with Bush is heading home with plans, he says, to write a book and stay out of electoral politics.