It's easy to paint Karl Rove as the evil monster who has dominated George W. Bush's world by spinning only dark and nefarious plots for 15 years. The picture often painted is a guy so horribly wicked that you can't imagine anyone buying his services.

The truth, of course, is more complicated. The fact is, if you're running for president, you want a guy like Karl Rove on your staff. The man eats, sleeps and breathes politics. Candidates need someone like that around if they are going to reach voters in places with very distinct cultures, mores and traditions.

I once was flying with Gov. George W. Bush and Karl Rove into Omaha when Rove started talking about some town in Nebraska that neither Bush nor I knew much about. Rove immediately rattled off chapter and verse about that community. By the end, I knew more about that place than my hometown.

You need a mind like that, especially when it can see the big picture.

A former Bush aide I spoke with recently, who doesn't consider himself a Rove acolyte, pointed out how unprecedented it was for an incumbent party to lose during a time of peace and prosperity. But that's what happened to the Democrats in 2000 because Rove put together a strategy that trumped a roaring economy and global stability. His alternative was a candidate who considered himself a "different kind of Republican" — and who wouldn't shame the White House, as the outgoing president had.

That strategy proved a winner against Bill Clinton's vice president, but Bush then erred by bringing his small facts-and-big picture guy into the White House. Some people believe Bush probably started thinking about it when he required Rove to sell his prosperous direct-mail and consulting business before the 2000 campaign took flight. Bush wanted no conflicts of interest, but he wasn't going to leave his longtime friend high and dry.

However it happened, the president made the wrong call. Rove could have advised and strategized from the outside, the role James Carville played for Clinton. Bush could have given him some kind of frequent-flier card to get into the Oval Office without all the security gyrations.

Bottom line, Karl Rove didn't need to be on the White House staff, which I say for two reasons that more or less dovetail.

First, there's his personality. You've probably met someone like this — funny and entertaining but who must prevail. Call that person a likable bully.

When Rove joined the White House staff to stay close to the president and show off his intellectual wonkishness, his domineering style came with him. People like that suck the air out of the room, particularly when they've masterminded two winning presidential campaigns.

They also have a tendency to make sure few others get close to the big guy, in this case the one who sits in the Oval Office. That last part can be deadly because it isolates a president, as several Bush officials and supporters say he has done.

Second, Rove brought to governing his conviction that a Republican president should play to his conservative base to win re-election. Some believe this shift occurred after the 2000 Florida recount. The closeness of that election and its tumultuous outcome persuaded Rove that his boss most needed to rally conservatives.

Fast-tracking the Bush tax cuts in spring 2001 was a perfect example. Several conservative Democrats I interviewed on Capitol Hill at the time said they weren't opposed to the cuts but felt Bush was giving short-shrift to the budget deficit. They also believed tax cuts were being rammed down their throats to satisfy the GOP base.

Bush got his tax cuts, but his popularity plummeted on Capitol Hill, only to be renewed because of 9/11.

There's a lesson in this for those running to replace him. They'd be crazy to so demonize a Karl Rove that they don't have someone like him on their side. But they should think twice before giving that person the keys to a White House office.

What works on the campaign trail doesn't always work in Washington.

William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News.